Falling
by thatblueboxoverthere
Summary: Melissa Smith has a mysterious past. She barely remembers who she is, and weird and frightening dreams plague her sleep. Along side the Winchester brothers on a mission to find their dad, will she finally figure out her secret? First Supernatural fic, please be kind. Rated T cause I'm paranoid
1. Pilot

**Hello! So, I'm not sure where this is planning to go, but it will most likely follow most of the episodes (I'll change them so they're a bit different, but still follow the episodes all the same). The boring ones I'll skip. Since the system doesn't allow first chapter titles when there's only one chapter, I'll just say the title: Pilot. Yeah, lame, I know, but I'll be calling all of the chapters by their episode name so they're identifiable. Now, like I said, I'm not sure where this is planning to go. Please review 'cause I'd like to know what you think about it. Anyway, I hope you enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: Sadly, I don't own Supernatural. There, I said it! Happy?**

* * *

Melissa Smith jolted awake, sitting upright in the backseat of Dean Winchester's 1967 Chevrolet Impala, a cold sweat layering her shivering body. It had been the first time she'd dreamed about her family in a long time, and this time it was worse than other dreams. Somehow, she just knew it was her whole family, her relatives; they're homes just…burning. It always scared the living daylights out of Mel, even though she wanted nothing to do with them anymore.

Last night, she and Dean had gone to Stanford University to collect one Sam Winchester to help look for Sam and Dean's father, John Winchester, who had been missing for three weeks already. As of now, they were currently near Jericho, California to investigate the case John had disappeared from. And before you ask, no, Mel and Dean were _not_ a couple.

Mel brushed her wavy black hair out of her face and looked out the windows, trying to figure out where they were exactly. A gas station, by the looks of it. Sam was half-sitting out of the car, the passenger door open, looking through Dean's collection of tapes.

"You okay?" Sam asked, glancing at her worriedly before going back to looking at the tapes.

"Yeah," Mel replied absently, cleaning her heavy dark rimmed glasses with her shirt before replacing them on her face. "Weird dream." _More like _redundant_ dream_, Mel thought to herself, habitually picking at the unraveling hems of her fingerless gloves. For a few months after John had found her, Mel would get dreams that bothered her to the point of insomnia. Luckily, the dreams had stopped after about six months, but if they were coming back…that definitely did _not_ seem good.

"Hey! You guys want breakfast?"

Mel started slightly and looked out the partially opened back passenger window briefly to see Dean approaching the car, junk food in hand.

"No thanks," Sam said.

"Same," Mel agreed, lying back down; she preferred a caffeinated beverage (i.e. a Monster Energy drink) over any form of food in the morning.

"So how'd you pay for that stuff? You and Dad still running credit card scams?" Sam asked wryly.

"Yeah, well, hunting ain't exactly a pro ball career," Dean reasoned as he put the gas nozzle back on the pump.

"It's not like we get caught," Mel added as she massaged her sore cramped up neck, which had been scrunched up against the window at an awkward angle.

"Yeah? And what names did you write on the application this time?" Sam demanded, swinging his legs back inside the car and closed the door.

"Uh…Burt Aframian." Dean got into the driver seat and put a bag of chips and a soda down. "And his son Hector. Scored two cards out of the deal." He closed the door.

"One of my cards says Misha Collins on it; Dean picked the name out," Mel deadpanned, frowning. "I don't think 'Misha' even _is _a girl's name, you know." Actually, it didn't sound like a real name at all. It sure was a cute name, though, _not_ that she was going to say that to Dean.

"That sounds about right," Sam murmured in response to the names; most of the names which they chose were completely random and sometimes didn't go with the person. "I swear, man, you've gotta update your cassette tape collection."

"Why?" Dean asked, incredulous.

"Well, for one, they're cassette tapes. And two: Black Sabbath? Motorhead? Metallica? It's the greatest hits of mulletrock."

"Hey!" Mel snapped, pointing a threatening finger at the younger Winchester. "Don't dis the music."

"Yeah, and house rules, Sammy," Dean said, popping a tape in the player. "Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole." He started the engine, music along with it.

"You know, Sammy is a chubby twelve-year-old," Sam stated dryly, annoyed. Mel made a face in his direction, as if to say 'So?' "It's Sam, okay?"

AC/DC's _Back in Black_ started playing, loudly. "Sorry, I can't hear you, the music's too loud," said Dean before taking off down the road.

For the next couple hours, Mel contemplated over her dream. It had been a little different this time, which was the strangest part. The dream would always start with her returning home. No one would be in sight, however, so she would look around. The first place she always looked was the garden, to look for the gardener and ask if he'd seen anyone. And in the garden, that's where the first spark was lit. It wouldn't take long, and in no time, and she just knew that is was her whole home and family was ablaze with fire until there was nothing left but her - even though she didn't remember a single thing about them.

The difference in her dream last night was it wasn't _her_ home that was burned; it was a run down shack of a house surrounded by clunker cars. Nevertheless, she just knew that her family would _definitely_ _not_ live in something like that, so why change it? 'Cause Mel highly doubted, from the looks of the mansion in her dreams, they wouldn't be moving any time soon.

Mel was broken out of her reverie when she noticed a road sign that read JERICHO 7. Sam was on the phone with the Jericho hospital and morgue records keeper, finding out if their dad was hurt or dead. By the sound of the conversation, to Mel, it sounded like their dad was neither.

"Check it out," Dean said, pulling the car over; up ahead, there was a bridge with two police cars parked near it, swarmed with officers. Dean turned off the engine and reached for the glove compartment to grab a box full of fake ID cards.

Mel dug around in her bag for her own federal marshal ID and grabbed her forensics kit (which was very real, thank you very much), which she stuffed into her 'equipment bag.' The forensics kit was just for show, but there had been a few occasions where Mel had had to use it. She slung the bag's strap over her shoulder and followed the brothers to the crime scene, jogging a little to keep up with them. There were two county deputies there who were saying something about the victim dating one of their's daughter.

"How's Amy doing?" Deputy #1 asked.

"She's putting up missing posters downtown," Deputy #2 replied; probably Amy's father.

"You fellas had another one like this just last month, didn't you?" Dean asked with fake curiosity, interrupting them.

"And who are you?" Deputy #1 asked suspiciously.

Dean and Mel flashed their badges. "Federal marshals," Dean said.

"You three are a little young for marshals, aren't you?" #1 inquired.

The older Winchester laughed. "Thanks, that's awfully kind of you." Dean replied snidely, approaching the victim's car. "You did have another one just like this, correct?"

"Yeah, that's right." #1 nodded. "About a mile up the road. There've been others before that."

"So, this victim, you knew him?" Sam questioned.

The Deputy nodded. "Town like this, everybody knows everybody."

Dean circled the car, looking for any sign of a haunting or supernatural existence. "Any connection between the victims, besides that they're all men?"

"No. Not as far as we can tell," the Deputy admitted.

"So what's the theory?" Mel asked, examining the car as well. She noticed Sam walking over to Dean.

"Honestly, we don't know. Serial murder? Kidnapping ring?"

"Well, that is exactly the kind of crack police work I'd expect out of you guys," Dean said. Sam appeared to stomp on his brother's foot.

"Thank you for your time," Sam said, and started walking away. Dean and Mel followed. "Gentlemen."

As soon as they were a good distance away, Dean angrily whacked Sam on the head.

"Ow! What was that for?" Sam demanded.

"Why'd you have to step on my foot?"

"Why do you have to talk to the police like that?"

Dean moved to stand in front of Sam, forcing the younger Winchester to stop. "Come on. They don't really know what's going on. We're all alone on this. I mean, if we're going to find Dad we've got to get to the bottom of this thing ourselves."

Sam cleared his throat, and nodded at Sheriff and FBI agents behind Dean.

"Can I help you boys?" the Sheriff asked, apparently unaware that a woman was there.

"No, we were just leaving, sir," Mel called out, pointedly making her presence known. "Agent Mulder. Agent Scully," she murmured, a little jokingly, as the FBI agents walked past. "Honestly, you two, can't you just zip it for five minutes?" she demanded as they made their way to the car.

"He started it," Dean spat childishly, pointing an accusing finger at his little brother.

"I don't care who started it," Mel exclaimed coolly. "I would just like you to finish it." With that, she went in between the boys and gave them both a good whack on the head. Mel flounced away, leaving both boys standing there in a stupor, feeling like she accomplished something.

Vaguely, she heard Dean mutter, "God, she's like a freakin' mother!"

As they rode into town, an uncomfortable and uncomfortable silence filled the interior of the Impala. Someone had yet to say anything about the fight at the bridge. Dean parked the car on the main road and the trio got out, beginning their search of Amy. It took a while, but they eventually found a girl putting up MISSING: TROY SQUIRE posters on the local movie theater's bulletin board.

"I'll bet you that's her," Dean said.

"Yeah," Sam agreed.

Dean walked up to the girl. "You must be Amy."

"Yeah," she said without looking away from the poster she was tacking to the board.

"Yeah, Troy told us about you. We're his uncles. I'm Dean, this is Sammy. And this is my girlfriend Melissa."

"He never mentioned you to me," Amy remarked, walking away. They walked with her.

"Well, that's Troy, I guess," Dean replied. "We're not around much, we're up in Modesto."

"So, we're looking for him too, and we're kinda asking around," Sam informed her.

A girl came up next to Amy; she was dressed like a sort of Emo person, with the pale skin and dark make up and all that. "Hey, are you okay?"

"Yeah," Amy confirmed.

"Is it okay if we ask you a couple questions?" Mel asked.

"Yeah, sure," Amy said, walking towards a small diner.

They followed Amy and her friend into the diner, where they sat down at a booth large enough for the five of them. Sam and Dean got coffees, the two high school students got sodas, but Mel didn't get anything. They waited patiently for Amy to begin her story.

"I was on the phone with Troy. He was driving home. He said he would call me right back and…he never did," Amy summarized.

"He didn't say anything strange, or out of the ordinary?"

The brunette shook her head. "No. Nothing I can remember."

"Here's the deal, ladies. The way Troy disappeared, something's not right. So if you've heard anything…" Amy and her friend looked at each other. "What is it?"

"Well, it's just…I mean, with all these guys missing, people talk," Amy's friend admitted.

"What do they talk about?" the brothers said in perfect unison.

"It's kind of this local legend. This one girl? She got murdered out on Centennial, like decades ago." Mel stole a glance at the brothers, and listened as the friend continued: "Well, supposedly she's still out there. She hitchhikes, and whoever picks her up? Well, they disappear forever."

Sam and Dean looked at each other. "Thank you for your time," Sam said, looking back at the girls. They nodded, and the trio left the diner.

"Seems like a possible haunting," Mel mused, looking at Dean. "And girlfriend? Seriously?"

"What? That's the best part of improv speech; you never know what's gonna come outta your mouth," he defended.

At the library, Mel and Sam watched as Dean typed in search keywords "FEMALE MURDER HITCHHIKING," and "FEMALE MURDER CENTENNIAL HIGHWAY," both getting zero results.

"Let me try," Sam suggested, reaching for the mouse.

"I got it," Dean said loudly, slapping his brother's hand away. Sam shoved Dean's chair out of the way and took over the computer; unfortunately, Dean's chair ran into Mel's, sending them both wheeling into a bookcase, thus causing a mild crash. "Dude!" the older Winchester exclaimed, pushing his chair back next to Sam's.

Mel blushed, but ignored the annoyed stares of the other people in the library and, too, wheeled her chair over by Sam's.

Dean hit his younger brother on the shoulder. "You're such a control freak."

"So, angry spirits are born out of violent death, right?"

Though Sam's question was rhetorical, Dean answered it anyway. "Yeah."

"Well, maybe it's not murder," he said, replacing "MURDER" with "SUICIDE." He clicked the GO button, and an article titled "SUICIDE ON CENTENNIAL" appeared on the screen. "This was 1981. Constance Welch, twenty-four years old, jumps off Sylvania Bridge, drowns in the river."

"Does it say why she did it?" Mel inquired.

"Yeah." Sam sighed.

"What?" Dean demanded.

"An hour before they found her, she calls 911. Apparently her two little kids are in the bathtub. She leaves them alone for a minute, and when she comes back, they aren't breathing. Both die."

Mel's eyes widened slightly. "Whoa."

"'Our babies were gone, and Constance just couldn't bear it,' said husband Joseph Welch."

Dean pointed to a picture of a bridge in the article. "That bridge look familiar to you?"

It did; it was the same bridge where Troy's car had been found.

"Looks like we're gonna need to look around there," Mel stated.

"Yeah. But tonight, to avoid the cops," Sam agreed.

True to their word, late that night, Dean, Sam, and Mel drove the Impala out to the bridge. Dean parked it at the mouth of the bridge, and Sam and Dean got out to investigate. Mel waited in the backseat car, researching for information on Constance Welch on her old, crappy, and slow (yet useful) Toshiba laptop.

The first thing Mel decided to look up was that article again; she hadn't had the chance to read it at the library. She brought it up, and read the five paragraph article:

'_A local woman's drowning death was ruled a suicide, the county Sheriff's Department said earlier today. Constance Welch, 24, of 4636 Breckenridge Road, leapt off Sylvania Bridge, at mile 33 of Centennial Highway, and subsequently drowned last night._

'_Deputy J. Pierce told reporters that, hours before her death, Ms. Welch logged a call with 911 emergency services. In a panicked ton, Ms. Welch described how she found her two young children, 5 and 6, in the bathtub, after leaving them alone for several minutes. She reported that their complex-[…]._

'"_What happened to my children was a terrible accident. And it must have been too much for my wife. Our babies were gone, and Constance just couldn't bear it," said husband Joseph Welch. "Now I ask that you all please respect my privacy during this trying time."_

'_At the time of the children's death and Ms. Welch's subsequent suicide, Mr. Welch was at the Frontier auto salvage yard, where he words the graveyard shift as associate manager._

'"_Connie might have been quiet, but she was the sweetest, most caring girl I ever knew," said Deanna Kripke, a neighbor. "She just doted on those children."'_

So the husband hadn't been there that night. Didn't mean he didn't have anything to do with it, however. Spirits were like that; getting revenge in the oddest ways, sometimes because so and so did this and that, even though it didn't seem that big of deal.

Mel Googled Constance's name, and came up with a bunch Red Cross volunteering stuff, hospital volunteering…she was clean, no criminal record even.

Mel was about to Google the husband's name, when suddenly her screen blanked out, and the Impala started.

"What the crap?" she mumbled, closing the lid of her computer. She tried to open the door, but it was like it was jammed shut. The temperature in the car plummeted, and Mel cursed. Very suddenly, the car jerked forward at full speed, and Mel cursed again when she saw that the car was headed straight for the Winchesters. Finally, the boys had the guts to dive over the side of the bridge, and the Impala squealed to a stop next to the barrier, shutting down. Mel breathed a sigh of relief before launching herself out of the car. She peered over the side of the railing to see Sam hanging on for dear life on a pole that had just _happened_ to be there, thankfully, and Dean lying motionless on the bank below.

"Sam, you okay?" Mel asked, helping him up.

"Yeah," Sam replied, looking down at the river again, and noticed his brother. "Dean! Hey, are you all right?"

Dean turned around onto his back, made the a-ok sign, and deadpanned, "I'm super." Mel and Sam laughed, noticing he was all muddy.

After Dean was back on the bridge, he looked over the Impala's engine.

"Your car all right?" Sam asked as his brother slammed the hood down.

"Yeah, whatever she did to it, seems all right now. That Constance chick, what a _bitch_!" The last part was shouted at Constance, but she was most likely long gone by now.

"Well, she doesn't want us digging around, that's for sure," Sam said, sitting down on the car hood next to Dean. "You find anything on the computer, Mel?"

"Yeah, a few things." Mel nodded. "She was a volunteer nurse, and helped out at blood drives. No criminal record, actually."

"So, she's clean," Sam muttered. He looked at his brother. "You smell like a toilet."

Dean looked down at himself, and then shrugged.

The next morning (after sleeping in the Impala the previous night), it was decided that it was time to book a motel room. They boys went inside to book a room while Mel waited out by car, gathering her things together. Without reason or warning, she was suddenly assaulted by a headache. Thousands of voices buzzed around in her head, the words so jumbled she couldn't make heads or tales of it. But as quickly as it had come, the headache and the voices were gone. It took her a second to realize she was doubled over, clutching her head, and someone was calling her name.

"Mel! Mel, snap out of it!" Dean. Regaining composure over herself, Melissa straightened up. "Another one of those headaches?"

Mel nodded. "Yeah. They were louder this time."

"Wait, what headaches?" Sam asked, confused.

"I've been getting these headaches for a while," Mel admitted. "They'd start suddenly, and then there'd be these voices - thousands of them, all whispering, and I can't make out what their saying."

"Have you seen a doctor?" the younger Winchester asked.

Mel shook her head. "It's not medical." She shrugged awkwardly. "So what's our next move?"

"We'll we're gonna go check out Dad's room, see what he's got there," Sam informed her.

John's motel room was number 10. While Dean and Mel kept lookout, Sam picked the lock. Once said lock was picked, Mel followed Sam inside, but Dean, apparently unaware that they had gone inside, had to be grabbed by the jacket collar by Sam and yanked inside.

The motel room looked almost like a criminal central. On almost every vertical space there was _something_ taped, tacked, or pinned to it; maps, newspaper clippings, pictures, and notes. Not only did it look like a hideout, but it also looked like a tornado had gone through a garbage dump and dropped everything in that room. There was a half-eaten and cold burger on the nightstand, dirty laundry strewn everywhere, and garbage spilling out of the bin. Supernatural protection stuff was placed haphazardly about as well.

Mel noticed Dean turn on a lamp, pick up the half-eaten burger, sniff it, and recoil at the smell. "I don't think he's been here for a couple days, at least," he said.

Mel inspected the papers that covered the far wall away from the bed. There was a picture of each Centennial Highway victim, all lined in order of who disappeared when.

"Salt, cats-eye shells…he was worried," Mel heard Sam say. "Trying to keep something from coming in."

Sam and Dean joined Mel by the wall.

"What have you got here?" Sam asked.

"Centennial Highway victims," Mel answered. "It doesn't make sense. 'Cause, different men, different jobs, ages, ethnicities. None of them even look related, somehow. What's the connection? What do they have in common?"

"Dad figured it out," Sam said from across the room. Mel hadn't even noticed him move.

"What do you mean?" Dean asked as he and Mel turned around to look.

"He found the same article we did. Constance Welch; she's a Woman in White."

The older Winchester turned his head to look back at the victims' pictures. "You sly dogs."

"What's a Woman in White?" Mel had never heard of that type of monster.

"A Woman in White, sometimes known as a Weeping Woman, is a sort of phenomenon, a spirit. When they were alive, their husbands were unfaithful to them, and these women, basically suffering from temporary insanity, murder their children. Then, once they realized what they had done, they take their own life. So now their spirits are cursed, walking back roads, or waterways. If they find an unfaithful man, they kill him, and that man is never seen again," Sam explained.

Mel nodded. "That fits. It explains why Constance took the plunge."

"Exactly."

"All right, so if we're dealing with a Woman in White, Dad would have found the corpse and destroyed it," said Dean.

"She might have another weakness."

Dean crossed the room over to his brother. "Well, Dad would wanna make sure. He'd dig her up. Does it say where she's buried?"

"No, not that I can tell. If I were Dad, though, I'd go ask her husband." Sam tapped the picture of Joseph Welch. "If he's still alive."

Mel walked over and looked at the caption below the picture; it said he was thirty, and the article was dated 1981, so if her math was right, he would be sixty-four.

Sam turned and went to look at something else. Below the newspaper clipping, Mel noticed an old black and white picture of a woman dressed in a long, flowing white dress.

"All right. Why don't you guys, uh, see if you can find an address, I'm gonna get cleaned up." Dean started heading for the bathroom.

"Hey, Dean?" Dean turned around at Sam's words. "What I said earlier, about Mom and Dad, I'm sorry."

Dean held up a hand. "No chick-flick moments."

Sam chuckled. "All right. Jerk."

"Bitch," his brother replied. Mel giggled at their exchange, and Dean looked at her with a stern face. "Nerd." He went into the bathroom.

Mel just giggled again. "I'm gonna go hide out in the car, k?"

"Mm-hm," Sam mumbled.

Shrugging, Mel stepped outside and strolled over to the car, which was parked across the street from the motel.

She got into the back seat, sat so she could put her feet up, got her laptop out, and worked on writing the book she wrote during her free time. Mel supposed she was _probably_ supposed to be doing research, but there probably wasn't anything to research in the first place.

Melissa had gotten about five pages done when someone knocked on the window behind her. Turning her head, her heart sunk when she saw the police deputy officer from the bridge standing there expectantly. Mel rolled down the window and put on a cheery smile. "Hi! Can I help you, officer?"

"Come with us," he grunted.

Mel blinked. "Is there a problem?" Better to play innocent than just follow along.

"Just come with us," he repeated.

Sighing, Mel closed the lid of her computer, packed it away, and got out of the car. The deputy spun her around, pulling out a pair of cuffs. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be held against you in the court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot or do not appoint an attorney, an attorney will be appointed for you. You are now under arrest."

_Crap_.

"So, you guys wanna give us your real names?" the Sherriff asked as he came back in the interrogation room, carrying in a box of stuff from John's motel room.

Both Mel and Dean were currently seated at an interrogation table.

"I told you, it's Nugent. Ted Nugent," Dean insisted.

"And I'm his twin sister, Brittany," Mel chipped in; it was true, they _are_ the same age: 26.

The Sherriff sighed. "I'm not sure you realize just how much trouble you're in, here."

"We talkin', like, misdemeanor kind of trouble, or, uh, squeal like a pig trouble?" Dean joked, not at all fazed. Mel just sighed.

"You got the faces of ten missing persons taped to your wall," the older man shot back. Dean looked away, and Mel sighed again. "Along with a whole lot of satanic mumbo-jumbo. Guys, you two are officially suspects."

"That makes sense. Because when the first one went missing in '82 we were _three_," Dean replied, frustrated.

"I know you've got partners. One of 'em's an older guy. Maybe he started the whole thing. So tell me. Dean, Mel." The Sherriff grabbed John's journal out of the box and tossed it onto the table. "Is this his?" Mel and Dean just stared at it. The Sherriff paged through the journal, which is filled with all of John's notes about every monster he knew about. "I thought that might be your guy's names. See, I leafed through this. What little I could make out - I mean, it's nine kinds of crazy." Dean leaned forward to see which page the Sherriff was looking for. "But I found this, too." It was a piece of notebook paper, completely blank except for one sentence that was circled: 'DEAN + MEL 35-111.' "Now. You're stayin' right here till you tell me exactly what the hell that means."

Mel knew what that meant, but it had nothing to do with their current case.

"It's my old high school locker combo; he needed it to get something while I was still in school," the older Winchester lied.

"Well, then why does it have her name on it, too?" the Sherriff argued.

"Because he couldn't remember whose was whose."

"Why isn't there another combo on it, then?"

Dean shrugged. "He forgot, I suppose."

"Well, I suppose you're lying. What does it _really_ mean?"

"It's my old locker combo."

"Tell the truth."

"I am; locker combination."

"There aren't enough numbers."

"Locker combo."

The Sherriff rolled his eyes. "This most definitely isn't a locker combination."

Mel groaned, and let her head fall back.

"You got somethin' to say, girl?" the older man asked.

"Yeah, actually," she replied in a sassy tone. "It's his friggin' combo. I know, because we were friends in high school, and he kept forgetting it. So, he made me remember it so I could tell him when he forgot again."

The Sherriff gave her a pointed look. "I highly doubt a five number sequence is the combination to a school locker." He pulled up a chair on the other side of the table. "So, you two gonna start tellin' the truth?"

Mel doesn't know how Dean reacted, but she just rested her arms and head on the table, and closed her eyes. "We _are_ telling the truth," she mumbled, her voice slightly muted because of her arm. She was starting to get another headache, and the interrogation wasn't helping. The whispering started a few minutes later, and the pain intensified. Melissa tried her best to ignore it, but she could tell her face was pinched with pain. Burying her head in the crook of her arm, she moaned quietly.

"You okay?" asked the Sherriff, who had apparently heard her moan.

"No," she groaned. The whispering gradually grew louder and louder until she couldn't hear anything around her anymore. It didn't sound like whispering, now; it sounded more like quiet shouting. Her head felt like a white hot poker was being shoved in it.

"_Come home_…" was the last thing she heard before the pain grew too intense and everything blanked out.

Mel was laying on a cool surface, and someone was shaking her shoulder lightly.

"Hey…wake up," she heard Dean's voice say, as if she was underwater. "Mel, wake up."

"Five more minutes," she grumbled, reaching for a nonexistent blanket. Her head hurt, and she just wanted to sleep. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes to see Dean leaning over her. "What happened to lead to me to be lying on the floor of a police station?"

"Well, we were arrested," Dean remarked, "and you had one of those migraines and passed out."

"…Oh," was all Mel said, embarrassed. "How long was I out?"

"Just a couple minutes." Dean helped her up. They sat back down at the table, where the Sherriff was still sitting at.

"So, you gonna tell me what that _really_ means?" he asked coolly.

"I don't know how many times I gotta tell you. It's my high school locker combo," the older Winchester replied.

The older man gave him a look. "We gonna do this all night long?"

"We just got a 911." Mel looked over to see one of the deputies from the bridge leaning his head through the open doorway. "Shots fired over at Whiteford Road."

The Sherriff looked at them. "Either of you have to go to the bathroom."

Mel shook her head, confused. Dean said "No."

"Good." he produced to pairs of handcuffs and chained them to the table. The Sherriff left the room, closing the door behind him.

"Great, now what?" Mel asked rhetorically.

Dean grabbed a paper clip from the journal, and joke shrugged. "I have no idea." He grinned and unfolded it. Quickly, he picked the locks on both their cuffs, grabbed John's journal, and they waited by the door until the station was empty.

Once outside the building, they located a phone booth and Dean used that to call Sam.

"Fake 911 phone call, Sammy. I don't know, but that's pretty illegal," Dean spoke into the phone once Sam answered. "Listen, we gotta talk."

Mel and Dean had the phone in between their ears so they could both hear Sam's side of the conversation.

"_Tell me about it. So the husband _was_ unfaithful. We _are_ dealing with a Woman in White. And she's buried behind her old house, so that should have been Dad's next stop_," Sam informed them. It sounded like he was driving.

"Sammy, would you shut up for a second?" Dean demanded.

"_I just can't figure out why Dad hasn't destroyed the corpse yet_," Sam said, ignoring his brother.

"Well, that's what I'm trying to tell you," the older Winchester replied. "He's gone. Dad left Jericho."

"_What? How do you know?_"

"We've got his journal," Mel told him sadly.

"_He doesn't go anywhere without that thing_."

"Yeah, well, he did this time," Dean shot back.

"_What's it say?_"

"Ah, the same old ex-Marine crap, when he wants to let us know where he's going."

"_Coordinates. Where to?_"

"We're not sure yet," Mel said.

"_Guys, what the hell is going on?_" Sam asked worriedly."_Whoa!_"

The sound of a phone being dropped could be heard, and Dean frantically called his brother's name. "Sam? Sam!"

Faintly, a woman's voice could be heard: "_Take me home_."

"Crap," Dean muttered, hanging up. "C'mon, we gotta go jack a car."

Hurriedly, they rushed out of the phone booth and ran to the nearest car. Mel hopped into the passenger seat, while Dean jumped into the driver's and hotwired the car to start up. Once it did, he stomped on the gas pedal and they were off full speed to the old Welch house.

As soon as they reached the run down two story house, Dean leapt out of the car, not bothering to turn it off, and raced toward the Impala, gun in hand. The car in question was parked in front of the house, turned off.

Mel followed Dean, at a slower pace, and stopped just behind the Impala when Dean started to fire rounds through the driver side window. Anxiously, she listened to Sam's pained cries as she waited for Dean to stop shooting. Finally, though, the older Winchester did.

Much to Mel's surprise, the car started up again. "I'm taking you home!" she heard Sam shout, and the Impala suddenly burst forward, full speed, through the front wall of the house.

"Sam!" Dean shouted as car passed him. There was silence for a few seconds. "Stay here!" He ran forward, ready to shoot the gun if necessary, and entered the house.

"But…" Mel flopped her arms uselessly, pouting. Putting on her frowny face, she sat down on the ground Indian style, arms crossed. "Fine. I'll wait here," she grumbled. It was a few minutes later that she heard an inhuman scream come from the interior of the house. Startled, she jumped up onto her feet and waited attentively for any sign that the guys were all right. When it stopped, she could hear them talking. "Hey! You guys okay?" she called out.

"We're good!" came Dean's cheery voice. "Her kids ganked her!"

"Oh. Lovely," Mel remarked sarcastically, though she was grinning ear-to-ear. Another case closed; mission accomplished.

An hour later, Mel was laying half asleep in the backseat of the Impala, half listening to the conversation between the brothers. According to Sam, the coordinates led to Black Water Ridge, Colorado. Sadly, Sam had to return to Stanford for his scholarship interview.

Mel fell asleep, thinking the worst was over.

The worst wasn't over. Mel woke to the sounds of sirens and shouting. Lots of it. She sat up, and looked out the window to see they were outside Sam and his girlfriend Jess's apartment building, the couple's apartment on fire. Slowly, shocked, the brunette got out of the car. Sam was at the trunk, which was open, fiddling with a gun.

"Man, what happened?" Mel asked, in shock.

"Jess is dead," was all the younger Winchester said.

Dean walked over from the crowd of spectators and stood by his brother.

Sam threw the gun into the trunk. "We got work to do," he said, and slammed the trunk closed.


	2. Wendigo

**So...sorry for the wait *hides* but seriously, if you're following an episode, these things take a heckuva long time to write. Anywho, it's really late (around one-thirtyish) and my arms hurt from typing while laying down, so I'm just gonna shut up so you can read.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own _Supernatural_. If I did, Castiel would be MINE!**

* * *

"Are we there yet?" Melissa whined for the billionth time. She was used to long car rides, but give her a break! She was PMSing, for crying out loud.

"No," Dean grumbled. "It's about five minutes after the _last_ time you asked."

"Ugh, where are we, anyway?"

"Crossed the Colorado border 'bout an hour and a half ago."

Mel nodded, shifting around uncomfortably on her usual spot in the back seat. Seriously, the place had such limited mobility, especially when it was set up as her 'command and research central.' It was like she was in a freaking compressor, or something. "Yeah, but _are we there yet?_" the 26-year-old demanded.

"For the last time: no!" Dean exclaimed, turning up the music on the radio. Foreigner's _Hot-Blooded_ played through the speakers. "Shut your cake-trap, will you?"

Mel rolled her eyes, a smug smile on her face. "Fine." She was tempted to ask 'are we there yet?' again, but decided to save the teasing for later.

It wasn't a minute later that Sam bolted upright, blinking and rubbing his eyes as if he didn't know where he was.

"You okay?" Dean asked, glancing over at him.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Sam said, still blinking.

"Another nightmare?"

Sam cleared his throat, ignoring his older brother.

"You wanna drive for a while?"

Sam chuckled. "Dean, in your whole life you never once asked me that."

"Just thought you might want to. Never mind."

"Can _I_ drive?" Mel asked hopefully.

"No," the brothers answered simultaneously. Mel frowned, taken aback. Didn't they trust her? Just because she didn't have a license didn't mean she couldn't drive.

"Look, man, you're worried about me," Sam said after a few moments of silence. "I get it, and thank you, but I'm perfectly okay."

"Mm-hm," Dean mumbled, totally unconvinced.

"All right." The younger Winchester cleared his throat, grabbing a map off the dash. "Where are we?"

"We are just outside of Grand Junction," Dean revealed, and Mel gawked at him, offended.

"Oh, so you can tell Sammy, here, but are you gonna tell _me_ where we are? No! What is this? A game of 'Let's Ignore Mel for the Longest Possible Time?'" Mel shrieked.

"The reason I told Sam is because _he_ wasn't being the annoying two-year-old backseat driver."

"I take offence to that," she retorted.

"Good!"

Sam shook his head. "You two sound like an old married couple." That comment earned him twin glares from the people in question. "Anyway, maybe we shouldn't have left Stanford so soon."

"Sam, we dug around there for a week. We came up with nothing. If you wanna find the thing that killed Jessica - "

"We gotta find Dad first."

"Dad disappearing and this thing showing up again after 20 years? It's no coincidence."

"In my book there's no such thing as coincidences," Melissa mumbled. "Anyway, John'll probably have answers on what to do."

"It's weird, man. These coordinates he left us. This Blackwater Ridge…" Sam trailed off.

"What about it?" Dean asked.

"There's nothing there. It's just woods." Sam dropped the map onto his lap. "Why is he sending us to the middle of nowhere?"

"Search me," Mel replied, glancing at a sign that read: 'Welcome to LOST CREEK COLORADO National Forest.' "Hm. Charming."

"What?" Dean replied.

Mel shook her head. "That sign back there. Seems a little foreboding, don'tcha think?"

In response, the Winchesters chuckled quietly.

* * *

They found the ranger station no problem. That is, after Dean got lost three times.

"Just ask for directions!" Mel told him after wild goose chase numero dos.

"Men don't need directions, sweetheart, and guess what! I'm a man, so live with it," Dean had retorted angrily. Sam had just sat there, shoulders shaking slightly like he was trying to keep himself from laughing.

In any case, they found the station.

"I'm getting my own car after this," Mel declared as the got out of the Impala. Dean laughed at her comment. "What? You drive like a peeved male with not enough testosterone!"

"What's that supposed to mean?" the older Winchester, glaring at her.

"That you are the craziest and most illegal driver out there," Mel shot back.

"Guys!" Sam shouted, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Could you hold off World War III for five minutes?"

"No!" they shouted simultaneously, effectively shutting the younger Winchester up.

The station was empty if you didn't count the three hunters. They set about looking around, Dean at the decorations around the room, Sam and Mel at the 3D map in the middle of the room.

"So, Blackwater Ridge is pretty remote," Sam was saying. "It's cut off by these canyons here, rough terrain, dense forest, abandoned silver and gold mines all over the place."

Mel shivered involuntarily; she never did like dark and abandoned places.

"Dude, check out the size of this freaking bear," Dean spoke up from across the room.

Both Mel and Sam turned around to see what Dean was talking about. Mel shrugged and said, "I've seen bigger."

"And there are a dozen or more grizzlies in the area. It's no nature hike, that's for sure," Sam added in, walking over to his brother.

"You kids aren't planning on going out near Blackwater Ridge by any chance?" an authoritative voice said from behind Mel, causing her to let out a small yelp before whirling around to see an old ranger guy with a name tag labeled 'Ranger Wilkinson.'

"Oh, no, sir, we're environmental study majors from UC Boulder, just working on a paper."

"Recycle, man," Dean added, holding up a fist. Mel just looked at him like he was crazy.

"Bull," the Ranger retorted. "You're friends with that Haley girl, right?"

Dean seemed to hesitated for a second. "Yes. Yes we are, Ranger…Wilkinson."

"Well I will tell you exactly what we told her. Her brother filled out a backcountry permit saying he wouldn't' be back from Blackwater until the twenty-fourth, so it's not exactly a missing persons now, is it?" Wilkinson replied. Dean shook his head. "You tell that girl to quit worrying, I'm sure her brother's just fine."

"We will," Dean reassured the Ranger as the Ranger walked away. "Well that Haley girl's quite a pistol, huh?"

The Ranger stopped and turned around. "That is putting it mildly."

"Actually you know what would help is if I could show her a copy of that backcountry permit. You know, so she could _see_ her brother's return date."

Ranger Wilkinson eyed Dean skeptically for a second before grumbling about 'damn idiot kids' and headed to the back room.

Mel glared at Dean, and the man in question gave her a bemused look. "What?" he demanded. "I saw the chance to get a lead and I took it."

Mel rolled her eyes sarcastically. "No, you were looking for a chance to hook up with some girl. Heaven help her if you _do_ end up hooking up with her."

The older Winchester looked offended. "Why would I want to flirt with her? She could be an old woman, for all I know."

"What old woman's older brother would go camping in an obviously dangerous part of the woods?" Mel demanded.

Dean glared at her before finally giving up with a defeated look on his face.

The Ranger came back into the room, a slip of paper in hand. "Here's the copy of her brother's permit."

Dean took the paper from him, and replied, "Thank you, sir."

As soon as they were outside the building, the older Winchester started laughing victoriously.

"_Are_ you cruising for a hookup or something?" Sam asked.

"Oh, not you too," the older brother whined.

"The coordinates point to Blackwater Ridge, so what are we waiting for? Let's just go find Dad. I mean, why even talk to this girl?"

Mel got into the back seat of the Impala, not so eager to hear them argue. Did that make her a hypocrite when she argued with Dean? Possibly. But, at the moment, she didn't care.

A few seconds later, Sam got into the car, followed by Dean.

"Are you serious?" Dean was saying.

"Yes, Dean," Sam deadpanned.

Mel, ignoring the fact that she was probably missing something, brought out her trusty (yet crappy) Toshiba laptop. "So, what's our next move?"

"We're gonna pay a visit to Haley Collins," Dean replied.

"You're staying in the car," Dean said to Mel, immediately after he shut the car off.

Mel rolled her eyes. "I wasn't planning on getting out anyway, loser."

"_I_ am not a loser," Dean shot back as he and Sam got out of the car.

Mel shrugged. "Loser."

She watched as they walked up to the house, talked to who Mel assumed to be Haley, and then disappear into the house. Mel turned back to her laptop, where she was currently working on her book some more; there were about four chapters fully completed, with about fifteen pages per chapter. The book was basically her life's story starting from when she had been found and taken in by the Winchesters to the present, but if and when she got it published, most non-hunter people would probably think it just her being a Mary Sue and placing herself in a fantasy novel.

Mel finished about three more pages (with a very rough draft style, unfortunately) before the Winchesters came back outside, and by then, it was practically dark out.

"So, what's the scoop?" Mel asked once they were in the car.

"Haley and co. are going out to Blackwater Ridge like we are tomorrow," Dean informed her.

Melissa blinked. "Oh."

* * *

The trio found a small table in the corner of a local bar to do their research at. Sam and Mel both brought their laptops in, and Sam carried a folder of information.

"So, Blackwater Ridge doesn't get a lot of traffic. Local campers, mostly. But still, this past April, two hikers went missing out there. They were never found." Sam brought out John's journal and opened it up to a specific page.

"Any before that?" Dean asked.

Sam pulled out newspaper articles from the folder and showed them to Dean and Mel. "Yeah, in 1982, eight different people all vanished in the same year. Authorities said it was a grizzly attack. And again in 1959 and again before that in 1936."

Mel looked at the newspaper, and read the headlines:

**GRIZZLY BEAR ATTACKS!**

'_UP TO EIGHT HIKERS VANISH IN LOST CREEK AREA_

_HIKERS DISAPPEARANCE BAFFLE AUTHORITIES_

'_Families continue search and rescue efforts in spite of disappointing […]._'

Sam pulled out his laptop and opened it. "Every twenty-three years. Just like clockwork. Okay. Watch this." Mel moved around the table to see a video of a guy on Sam's computer, and assumed this was Haley's 'missing' brother. "Here's a clincher. I downloaded that guy Tommy's video to the laptop. Check this out." Sam clicked on the paused video three times, and after each click the video went to the next frame; it showed a shadow crossing the screen outside of the tent behind Tommy.

"Do it again," Dean muttered.

Sam repeated the frames. "That's three frames. That's a fraction of a second. Whatever that thing is, it can move."

Dean hit his brother. "Told you something weird was going on."

"Yeah." Sam closed his laptop. "I got one more thing." He handed another article over to Dean and Mel. "In '59 one camper survived this supposed grizzly attack. Just a kid. Barely crawled out of the woods alive."

"What's the kid's name?" Mel asked, looking over at the younger Winchester.

"Elliot Shaw," Sam answered, packing away his computer. "Let's go talk to him."

* * *

As soon as Mel saw the state of the house, she instantly did not like it. "I'm not going in."

"Why?" Dean demanded.

"Because he's obviously this old man with serious issues, and I don't want to be the pretty girl that he hits on," she answered. "I'll just…do some research."

"Sure." Dean shrugged. "You do that."

Breathing an internal sigh of relief, Mel grabbed her computer out of her bag and opened up the internet. She went to the usual sight she went to when she couldn't quite figure out what they were dealing with. So far, they knew it was fast, and it was tall - but unfortunately, height had nothing to do with it. When she was finished with her advanced brainstorming session, she was down to quite a list of freaks:

It could be ghouls. Though why ghouls would steal live people, Mel had no idea.

It could be a vengeful spirit. She'd heard of a spirit doing something similar once.

It could be a Wendigo, but Wendigos didn't really come this far west.

It could be an unlikely horde of zombies, though that, like the others, was unlikely.

The list went on and on. She was almost relieved when the boys got in the car; "Did you find out anything?" she asked eagerly, but deadpanning all the same.

"Well, we know it's corporeal," Sam piped up. "And that it has three claws on each arm - or leg. Seems to be either a skinwalker or a black dog."

* * *

The next morning, Dean, Sam, and Mel drove up to where Haley, her brother, and their guide were standing.

"You guys got room for three more?" Dean asked as he got out of the drivers seat.

Mel shook her head and tuned out the conversation as she gathered her things together; you know, womanly needs stuff, just in case (remember: she _was_ PMSing); her laptop; her satellite phone; her pistol with extra rounds; and her trusty dagger. She also snagged a few bottles of water out of her private stash and stuffed them in her bag as well, along with beef jerky and her iPod touch. She took off her flip-flops and replaced them with socks and hiking boots. Mel got out of the Impala to put on the other boot, and she heard a part of the conversation between Haley and Dean.

"And you're hiking out in biker boots and jeans?" Haley asked.

As Mel hopped around on one foot, trying to get the boot on, she heard Dean respond with a usual snarky reply. "Well, sweetheart, I don't do shorts."

"Yeah…well at least _I_ have the decency to wear comfortable shoes!" Mel snapped before falling over into some bushes. "Ow."

"You're not a ranger, too, are you?" Haley asked Mel warily as Mel stood up.

"Who, me? No," Mel answered, putting the strap of her bag over her shoulder. "That dork, over there, with the short hair? That's my brother."

"No offence, but you don't seem like the hiking type," Haley told her.

Mel shrugged. "I'm not. Truth be told, I _hate_ hiking."

"Then why are you coming with?" Haley demanded.

Mel shrugged again. "'Cause I like to help people. Got a problem with that?"

"All right!" the guide, Roy, shouted. "Let's get going!"

* * *

They'd been hiking for about an hour, and weirdly enough, in a singular line. Roy was in the front, followed by Dean, who was followed by Haley, then Ben, and then Sam, which left Mel bringing up the rear. She decidedly tuned out all conversation and just enjoyed the scenery around her.

"Man, I wish I'd brought my camera…" Mel murmured as she looked around.

"Yeah, I can agree with you there," she heard Sam say.

She was too busy looking at the foliage to notice that everyone had ceased movement, causing her to run right into Haley's brother, Ben.

"Sorry," she mumbled.

"S'ok," Ben replied.

As it turned out, Dean had almost stepped on a bear trap.

"It's a bear trap," Dean announced. Then, he pointed at Mel. "_Don't_ say anything."

Mel cracked a grin. "I wasn't going to."

"Right," Dean shot back sarcastically.

"Guys, again, with World War III," Sam complained.

"Shut up, Sam," Mel and Dean said in unison, getting strange looks from the others.

They hiked on. Some time later, Dean got ambushed by Haley, which caused the older Winchester to confess their true reason for being there. Nobody really spoke, they just walked. After what seemed like forever to Mel - forever to her feet, at least - they finally reached Blackwater Ridge.

"This is it," Roy announced, stopping. "Blackwater Ridge."

"What coordinates are we at?" Sam asked, walking past Roy.

Roy pulled out his GPS. "Thirty-five and minus one-eleven."

Sam stopped walking, and looking around, listening. Dean and Mel came up next to him.

"You hear that?" Dean asked.

"Yeah," Sam replied. "Not even crickets."

"Weird and not normal," Mel muttered.

"I'm gonna go take a look around," Roy announced.

"You shouldn't go off by yourself," Mel told him.

Roy laughed. "That's sweet. Don't worry about me." The guide walked past the Winchesters and Mel, taking the lead as Ben and Haley caught up with the group.

"All right, everybody stays together. Let's go," Dean said before following Roy.

Mel jogged after him, pulling out her iPod touch as she did so. She jammed the ear buds into her ears, and continued following everyone down the path to look for Tommy's and his friend's campsite. It was only five minutes later that everyone started taking off in a seemingly random direction; Mel, not being able to hear anything, followed feeling extremely confused, ripping out the ear buds. She was about to ask what was going on, but the completely demolished and ransacked campsite answered her question.

"Whoa…" Mel murmured as she put the iPod away.

"Oh, my God," Haley muttered.

"Looks like a grizzly," Roy announced grimly.

_Grizzly, my ass_, Mel thought as she looked around. Haley started shouting her brother's name, took off her backpack, and went looking through the campsite.

"Shh," Sam shushed her.

"Tommy?" Haley shouted.

"Shhhhhh!" Sam repeated, running up to her.

"Why?" Haley wondered.

"Something might still be out there," Sam replied, looking out at the surrounding trees.

He was right; Mel could sense _something_ out there, possibly watching them. "Guys…something's out there, all right," she announced warily as Sam and Dean went to investigate something else.

"And _how_ could you possibly know that?" Roy demanded, stepping in front of her.

Mel gave him what Dean called The Ultimate Bitch Glare, which sent most men running with their tails between their legs. She was glad to see it had somewhat of an effect on the guide. "I've been hunting before," Mel responded. "And believe me, I've _always_ known when I'm being watched, and it never fails."

"Help!" Came an anguished cry from the trees. "Help!"

Everyone instantly dropped their stuff and ran in the direction of the voice - everyone but Mel, who knew it was a trap, or something. "Wait! It's a diversion!" But nobody listened to her. Angrily, Mel pulled out her pistol and waited for whatever it was that was out there. When she heard movement in the trees behind her, she acted on instinct and whirled around, firing three bullets into the bushes.

"Mel!" she heard Sam and Dean shout.

Mel ignored them, quickly gathering everyone's stuff and putting it all together. Quickly, without taking her eyes off of the forest around her, she grabbed a stray stick and drew a protective symbol that warded off what she finally knew what this thing was - a Wendigo. The circle was just big enough for her and the packs to fit inside. Silently, she waited, standing tensely, gun at the ready to fire.

"Mel!" Dean called out.

"I'm fine!" she answered back, still watching the trees. "But I shot at it!" All bullets basically did was piss Wendigos off. So, there was no leaving the woods for her. She was stuck. One step outside the circle, Mel was dead meat.

Finally, the others came back, though Haley and Ben looked at her symbol warily, and Roy just looked at her like she was crazy.

"What are you, a cultist?" the guide demanded snarkily.

"No, you assclown," Mel retorted, still watching the woods. "It's a protective symbol that wards off certain things."

Roy rolled his eyes. "Where'd you get that gun, anyhow?"

"A friend," Mel retorted, deciding to ignore him from now on.

"Dean, I need to speak with you. In private," Sam hissed in Dean's ear. The brothers walked off some distance so they were out of earshot but you could still see them.

"All right, listen up, it's time to go," Sam announced as he walked back into camp. "Things have gotten…more complicated."

"Kid, don't worry," Roy spoke up. "Whatever's out there, I think I can handle it."

"It's not me I'm worried about. If you shoot this thing, you're just gonna make it mad, like Mel did. We have to leave. Now."

"One, you're talking nonsense. Two, you're in no position to give anybody orders."

"Relax," Dean cut in, trying to talk some sense into Roy.

"We never should have let you come out here in the first place, all right? I'm trying to protect you."

"_You_ protect _me_? I was hunting these woods when your mommy was still kissing you good night," Roy shot back.

"Yeah? It's a damn near perfect hunter. It's smarter than you, and it's gonna hunt you down and eat you alive unless we get your stupid sorry ass out of here."

In response, Roy laughed. "You know you're crazy, right?"

"Yeah? You ever hunt a Wen - " Before Sam could finish his sentence, Dean pushed him aside.

"Roy!" Haley shouted. "Stop. Stop it. Everybody just stop. Look. Tommy might still be alive. And I'm not leaving here without him." She gave a stern glare at the Winchesters.

There was a long pause of silence.

Dean was the one to break it. "It's getting late. This thing is a good hunter in the day, but an unbelievable hunter at night. We'll never beat it, not in the dark. We need to settle in and protect ourselves."

"How?" Haley demanded.

Mel pointed down at the symbol surrounding her. "We make a bigger one of these."

* * *

Several hours later Sam and Dean were finally finishing the protective circle, enabling Mel to _finally_ step outside of her smaller makeshift one.

Mel brought out an extra blanket that she always brought with her when camping (which wasn't that often, so she supposed it was just an extra blanket in general) and laid it down on the ground. "Finally, I can lay down!" she exclaimed, throwing herself onto the blanket; sometimes, she acted like a teenager, though she honestly really didn't care.

"One more time, that's - "

"Anasazi symbols," Dean answered Haley's unfinished question. "It's for protection. The Wendigo can't cross over them." Mel heard Roy laugh. "Nobody likes a skeptic, Roy." This time Mel laughed, though she hoped it was muffled by the blanket and the ground (she was laying on her stomach).

"Hey, Roy, you know in those horror movies where people are out in the woods and they hear someone screaming bloody murder for someone to help them, and the stupid assholes that are known as the people leave their safe house to go and try to save that person, but end up getting attacked?" Mel didn't wait for an answer. "Well, that's what the Wendigo is gonna try to do - lure you out. So whatever you do, _don't_ leave the friggin' circle." To explain Roy's silence, Mel came to the conclusion that the guide was ignoring her.

"How do you know Sam and Dean?" Haley asked Mel.

Mel shrugged. "They found me," she answered shortly. "Or, rather, their dad did."

"Found you?" Ben asked, apparently confused.

Mel sighed. "One day about six years ago, I woke up on the side of a road with no memory - literally, I was almost like a new born baby; I didn't even know what a _spoon_ was. The only thing I knew was my name (Melissa), how to talk, walk, run, etc, and that I'd ran away from home - I don't remember why, though. When I'd woken up I was fully clothed but was too scared shitless to go anywhere.

"It was almost dark by the time someone drove by…he introduced himself as John Winchester and I immediately trusted him, though I didn't even pause to wonder why. Once I'd told him that I couldn't remember a single thing about anything, he took me to the motel where he was staying with his sons - Sam and Dean. I didn't have anywhere to go, so they let me stay with them…and I've been traveling with them ever since." It took Mel a minute to realize she was crying and took her glasses off before hastily wiping the tears away.

"I'm sorry," Haley said quietly. "I shouldn't have asked."

"No, no…it's fine," Mel murmured, replacing her glasses. "I actually needed to get that out. Thanks." She gave a small smile.

"Help me!" Came a shout from within the trees, causing everyone to jump up to their feet: the Wendigo. "Please!" Mel grabbed her discarded gun off the ground. "Help!"

Sam shone his flashlight around, trying to catch a glimpse of it.

"He's trying to draw us out. Just stay cool, stay put," Dean commanded, his gun also at the ready.

"Inside the magic circle?" Roy mocked.

"Help! Help me!" the Wendigo shouted again. Then, there was growling and the sound of something attacking someone.

"Okay, that's no grizzly," Roy decided.

All the while, Haley was murmuring comforting words to her brother. Something rushed past the edge of the circle, followed by more growling, and Haley shrieked at the noise.

"It's here," Sam muttered.

Roy, stupidly, shot at the rustling bushes once, twice, three times. The Wendigo let out an anguished cry, and Roy shouted triumphantly, "I hit it!" The guide ran outside the circle to see what he'd hit, and despite Mel and Dean's warnings at him to stay inside the circle, he went to look anyway. Sam and Dean ran after Roy while Mel moved over to protect the two siblings, gun at the ready to shoot anything not normal.

Sam and Dean were shouting for Roy, but Roy didn't answer back. After a few tense minutes, the Winchesters returned to the campsite - with no Roy.

"He's gone," was all Sam said.

* * *

When Mel woke up the next morning, the first thing she noticed was really tired looking people. The second thing she noticed was that Dean was explaining the existence of monsters to Haley and Ben.

"I don't…I mean, these types of things, they aren't supposed to be real," Haley said.

"I wish I could tell you different," Dean admitted. Mel sat up and combed her hair with her fingers.

"How do we know it's not out there watching us?" Haley asked.

"We - Sam and I - don't, but Mel might," Dean told her. "She's always had the knack for knowing when she's being watched - kinda like a spidey sense."

"Mel?" Haley called over to her. "Is that…_thing_ out there?"

Mel listened to the woods surrounding them for a second, closing her eyes. Opening her eyes, she answered, "No. Not right now, anyway."

"How do you know about this stuff?" Haley asked Dean.

Dean paused, considering how to answer the question. "Kind of runs in the family."

Sam walked over to the group. "Hey. So we've got half a chance in the daylight. And I for one want to kill this evil son of a bitch."

"Touché," Mel replied.

"Well, hell, you know I'm in," Dean answered automatically.

"What exactly is that thing?" Ben demanded.

Sam opened John's journal to the Wendigo page and showed it to them. "'Wendigo' is a Cree Indian word. It means 'evil that devours.'"

"They're hundreds of years old. Each one was once a man. Sometimes an Indian, or other times a frontiersman or a miner or a hunter," Dean informed them.

"How's a man turn into one of those things?" Haley asked.

"Well, it's always the same. During some harsh winter a guy finds himself starving, cut off from supplies or help. Becomes a cannibal to survive, eating other members of his tribe or camp."

"Like the Donner Party," Ben supplied.

"Cultures all over the world believe that eating human flesh gives a person certain abilities. Speed, strength, immortality, you know, like the _Twilight_ vamps, minus the sparkly skin," Mel said.

"If you eat enough of it, over years, you become this less than human thing. You're always hungry," Dean said; he was now walking in a circle around the group.

"So if that's true, how can Tommy still be alive?" Haley demanded shakily.

Sam, Dean, and Mel exchanged looks. "You're not gonna like it," Dean admitted.

"Tell me."

"More than anything, a Wendigo knows how to last long winters without food. It hibernates for years at a time, but when it's awake it keeps its victims alive. It, uh, it stores them, so it can feed whenever it wants. If your brother's alive, it's keeping him somewhere dark, hidden, and safe. We gotta track it back there."

"And then how do we stop it?"

"Well, guns are useless, so are knives. Basically…" Dean held up a can of lighter fluid, a beer bottle, and a white cloth he'd gotten earlier, "…we gotta torch the sucker."

After Dean made a homemade Molotov cocktail (1), it took hours to track down the Wendigo- and all they had to do was follow a trail of bloody scratch marks on tree trunks. It was almost _too_ easy.

"Dean," Sam exclaimed from ahead of the group.

Dean caught up with him. "What is it?"

Mel saw they were looking up at the trees and ran over to see what they were looking at. Scratch marks with blood were _everywhere_, as were dozens upon dozens of broken twigs and branches.

"You know, I was thinking, those claw prints, so clear and distinct. They were almost too easy to follow," Sam mused.

"Crap," Mel muttered when they heard growling. Trees were rustling from everywhere around them, making the Wendigo's position too hard to pinpoint.

Suddenly, Haley screamed and rolled away from one of the trees just as a body dropped to where she had been standing a second ago. The body just _happened_ (note the sarcasm) to be Roy's.

"His neck's broke," Dean announced after examining the body.

As Sam helped Haley up, more growling could be heard; it was like it was coming from every direction at once.

"Okay, run, run, run, run, go, go, go!" Dean shouted, and everybody took off away from the growling.

They made it about half a mile before Mel tripped on a tree root, in turn causing Ben to trip over her. Sam helped Ben up, while Mel got herself up. They started running again, and Mel's 'senses' were just screaming at her that the Wendigo was no longer behind them. It was when Haley's scream sounded out that Mel's 'senses' were confirmed. It was _in front of them_.

By the time Mel, Sam, and Ben reached the spot where Haley's scream had come from, it was too late. Dean's Molotov cocktail lay broken on the forest floor.

"Haley!" Ben shouted, as if his sister would answer back.

"Dean!" Sam called out.

Mel crouched down to pick up the broken cocktail, but froze when she noticed something…colorful at the base of a tree.

"Hey…Sam, Ben, look." Mel pointed at the blue, red, and yellow dots. They looked almost like…M&Ms?

The younger Winchester knelt down to pick one up, and laughed. "It's better than bread crumbs."

And that's how Mel ended up in a twisted version of _Hansel and Gretel_.

"If it keeps its victims alive, why would it kill Roy?" Ben asked a few minutes after they'd started following the M&Ms.

"Honestly? I think because Roy shot at it, pissed it off," Sam answered.

"Which would probably make me dead victim numero dos unless we find this thing and kill it," Mel added in.

All of the sudden, the M&Ms stopped at a small drop-off, which led down to an abandoned mine.

They climbed down and noticed the sign nailed to the partially boarded up mine shaft opening:

WARNING! DANGER!

DO NOT ENTER

EXTREMELY

TOXIC MATERIAL

Shrugging, Sam went through the gap in the boards first, then Ben, then Mel. Mel took a look around at the forest, seeing if anything was watching them, before going into the mine as well.

It was dark. And cold. And…really smelly.

"Ew, what is that _smell_?" Mel whispered, plugging her nose. Sam opened his mouth to answer, but the twenty-six-year-old cut him off. "You know what? Never mind. I do not want to know."

Just as she'd finished speaking the Wendigo, apparently close by, growled. Sam clicked his flashlight off and backed away against the cavern wall, pulling Ben with them. Mel back against the opposite side of the cavern, barely breathing for fear of being caught and killed. After what seemed like hours, which it turned out to be only a few seconds, the Wendigo went down a different pathway through the tunnel.

They all breathed a sigh of relief before going down the way the Wendigo had just come from, Ben taking the lead. When a floorboard creaked from underneath him Ben suddenly stopped before the floor disappeared from underneath the trio.

When Mel landed on the rocky ground, she groaned before standing up. Looking around, she noticed skeletons hanging limply by the wrists from ropes attached to the ceiling. Thankfully, there were actually _live people_ hanging from the ceiling as well. Dean and Haley were hanging, unconscious, next to each other, and Haley and Ben's brother Tommy was also hanging unconscious a few feet away.

"Ahh!" Ben shouted, standing up abruptly.

"What?" Mel demanded.

"Sk…skulls…" Ben stuttered out.

Mel looked down at the ground, and said, "Oh."

Sam, apparently noticing Dean for the first time, quickly rushed to his brother's side. Ben hurried over to his sister and tried to wake her up.

Mel stood a short distance away, keeping watch in case the Wendigo came back. So far so good, she supposed. After Sam got Dean to wake up, he cut his older brother down, and then cut Haley down after she woke up.

Haley and Dean sat against the cavern wall as they gathered their bearings.

"You sure you're all right, Dean?" Sam asked.

"Yeah. Yep. Where is it?" Dean said quickly.

"Gone for now," Mel answered. "If it comes back, I'll be the first to know."

She sat next to the older Winchester as Sam, Haley, and Ben went over to Tom.

"Got any usable weapons?" Dean slurred out.

Mel rummaged in her bag until she found what she was looking for. She held the two weapons up. "I'd say so."

Dean grinned. "Flare guns. Those'll work."

"All right, let's get out of here." Mel helped Dean up, and everyone took off down the tunnel, Haley and Ben supporting their brother, Sam standing close by them, and Mel and Dean taking the lead with the flare guns. They hadn't made it five feet before they heard growling.

"I thought you said you'd be the first to know," Dean complained, glaring at Mel.

"Hey! It's not _my_ fault it works better in open spaces!" the female hunter shot back.

"We'll never outrun it," Haley said grimly.

Dean looked over at Mel, who was looking at him. "You thinking what I'm thinking?" he asked.

Mel nodded shortly. "Yeah, I think."

Dean turned to the three siblings. "All right, listen to me. Stay with Sam and Mel. They're gonna get you out of here."

"What are you gonna do?" Haley demanded worriedly.

Dean just winked at her and walked of, yelling, "Chow time, you freaky bastard! Yeah, that's right, bring it on, baby! I taste _good_!" And then he turned a corner, and was gone, though you could hear him still yelling even if it was indistinct.

"All right, come on! Hurry!" Sam shouted, though he let Mel take the lead through the maze of caverns.

Mel had the flare gun pointed, at the ready, in case the Wendigo came - which she knew it would. They were the bait while Dean circled around back to trap it. They were only a few hundred feet from the exit when the growling started.

"Mel gimme the gun," Sam murmured, and Mel didn't hesitate as she thrust the gun into the younger Winchesters hands. "Get them outta here," he said to her.

"Sam, no," Haley protested.

"Go! _Go_! Go!" Sam shouted.

"C'mon, guys," Mel said, pushing them towards the direction they came from. "Let's go!" She followed the Collinses down the tunnel, desperately wishing she'd grabbed another flare gun, but stopped in her tracks when she heard the sound of a flare gun being fired. "Sam!" she shouted, seeing her friend running towards them.

"Come on, hurry, hurry, hurry!" the guy in question shouted, and they continued to run down the cavern.

Turns out…the cavern was a dead end. _No_, Mel thought sadly, turning around to face the Wendigo, which had been taking its time as it had followed them the whole way.

"Get behind me," Sam said to the Collinses, who obliged. "You too, Mel."

Mel shook her head. "I'm not going down like a coward, Sam."

The Wendigo approached them slowly, taking its time. It roared, throwing its head back, probably thinking it had the biggest kill ever. Well, there was just one problem - apparently, it had forgotten about Dean.

"Hey!" the older Winchester shouted, holding his flare gun. The Wendigo turned, enabling Dean to shoot it in the stomach, and it went up in flames.

"Not bad, huh?" Dean asked rhetorically once the monster was dead.

Mel just grinned, glad that they'd successfully killed another evil son of a bitch.

* * *

After being questioned by the authorities (the cover story was that it was this massive killer bear with rabies) Mel hung back from the crowd, leaning against one of the back seat doors of the Impala. After saying goodbye to the Collinses, Sam and Dean joined her. They watched as Haley and Ben got into the ambulance to ride with their brother to the hospital.

"Man, I hate camping," Dean announced.

"Me too," Sam agreed as the ambulance drove away.

"Welcome to the club, boys," Mel chirped.

Dean looked at his brother. "Sam, you know we're gonna find Dad, right?"

"Yeah, I know," the younger Winchester said. "But in the meantime?" he looked at his brother. "I'm driving."

Dean, reluctantly, tossed his brother the keys to his baby. Mel laughed and got into the back seat. She had a good feeling about finding their dad; they were going to find him - they had too.

* * *

_The next day, sometime around noon…_

Mel was lounging in the back seat, sprawled across the seat. She was gazing with a bored expression up at the ceiling. Sighing, she sat up slightly and looked to Dean. "Are we there yet?"

Dean, who wasn't driving, face palmed and sent her a glare. "Shut up."

Mel and Sam laughed.

* * *

**1: For those of you who don't know, a Molotov cocktail is basically a homemade grenade minus the boom. If you don't know what one looks like, just watch the Swan Song episode (5.22) and look at what Castiel throws at Michael when he yells 'hey, assbutt!'**

**Tell me what you think :)**


	3. Phantom Traveler

**Hello! My sister is apparently obsessed with this now, and her constant insistence is what drove me to update like mad. So, anywho, thanks to those who reviewed. And please: review and tell me what you think :)**

**Disclaimer: Yeah, I don't own it. *cries in a darkened corner***

* * *

Mel sat hunched over her computer screen, typing away furiously like she was on a deadline - which she wasn't, by the way. Sam had just gone out to get coffee and breakfast, and Dean was still asleep (which wasn't surprising, considering it was only 5:35 in the morning). A few days ago, they'd put another spirit to rest - a little kid who'd been killed accidentally and was taking revenge on his murderers by killing the people they cared about. Though on that case, they hadn't been able to save everyone. The spirit had drawn one of the murderer's relatives to the lake - a six year old kid named Lucas - and wouldn't let him go. So, the last murderer that was alive (there had been two murderers, by the way) sacrificed himself to save his grandson (Lucas).

But that was all behind her and the Winchesters now, thankfully.

For about two days, Mel had been solely living off of caffeine and sugary junk food - anything to keep her from falling asleep. The nightmares were getting worse and she just couldn't bear to keep seeing what she could remember of her family die over and over again.

Mel looked up as Sam entered the motel room, three cups of coffee in one of those portable cup trays that restaurants gave out and a bag of doughnuts in hand. "Oh, yay. Gimme." Mel held her hand out, and Sam handed Mel her coffee.

"Morning, sunshine," Sam called out in his brother's direction.

Dean groaned. "What time is it?"

"Uh, it's about five forty-five."

"In the _morning_?"

"Yep."

"Where does the day go?" Dean mumbled as he sat up. "Did you guys get any sleep last night?"

"Nope," Mel replied nonchalantly, as if talking about the weather.

"Well, I grabbed a couple hours," Sam said.

"Liar. 'Cause I was up at three, Sam, and you were watching a George Foreman infomercial." Dean swung his legs over the side of the bed, all the while giving his brother a disapproving look.

"Hey, what can I say? It's riveting TV." Sam shrugged.

"When was the last time either of you got a good night's sleep?"

"Before we went to go get Sam," Mel deadpanned.

Sam shrugged. "I don't know, a little while, I guess. It's not a big deal."

"Yeah, it is," the older Winchester retorted.

"Look, I appreciate your concern - "

"Oh, I'm not concerned about you. It's your job to keep my ass alive, so I need you sharp."

Sam shrugged again.

"Seriously, you still having nightmares about Jess?"

Sam crossed the room and sat on the other bed across from Dean. "Yeah. But it's not just her. It's everything. I just forgot, you know? This job. Man, it gets to you." He handed Dean his coffee.

"You can't let it. You can't bring it home like that." Dean took a sip of his coffee.

"So, what? All this it…never keeps you up at night?"

The twenty-six-year old shook his head.

"Never? You're never afraid?"

"No, not really."

Sam reached over and pulled a large knife from underneath Dean's pillow and held it up with a doubtful look.

"That's not fear." Dean took the knife. "That is precaution."

Mel snorted, and Sam said, "All right, whatever. I'm too tired to argue."

A phone - Dean's - started ringing. Dean grabbed it and looked at it in confusion for a second before answering it. "Hello? - Oh, right, yea. Up in Kittanning, Pennsylvania, the poltergeist thing. It's not back, is it? - What is it? - Yeah, we'll be there. - Bye."

"Who was it?" Mel queried, looking up from the computer screen.

"You remember Jerry Panowski, from out in Pennsylvania?" Dean asked, standing up.

"Yeah?"

"Well, he says he's got something. So we're gonna go check it out."

Since they were in West Virginia, it only took them roughly four hours to reach Kittanning. They headed straight to the airfield where Jerry worked, not bothering to book a motel room until they were sure they knew what it was they were dealing with.

"Thanks for making the trip so quick. I ought to be doing you guys a favor, not the other way around. Dean, Mel, and your dad really helped me out," Jerry was saying to Sam as they followed Jerry through one of the storage hangars.

"Yeah, he told me. It was a poltergeist?" Sam inquired.

"_Poltergeist_? Man, I love that movie," some random guy said.

"Hey, nobody's talking to you. Keep walking!" Jerry shouted at the guy. "Damn right it was a poltergeist, it practically tore our house apart. Tell you something, if it wasn't for you guys and your dad, I probably wouldn't be alive. Sam, your dad said you were off at college. Is that right?"

"Yeah, I was. I'm…taking some time off."

"Well, he was real proud of you. I could tell. He talked about you all the time."

"He did?"

"Yeah, you bet he did," Jerry answered. "Oh, hey, you know I tried to get a hold of him, but I couldn't. How's he doing, anyway?"

"He's, um, wrapped up in a job right now," Dean lied.

"Well, we're missing the old man, but we get Sam. Even trade, huh?"

Dean laughed as Sam said, "No, not by a long shot."

"I got something I was you guys to hear," Jerry said, leading them into his office. While Jerry dug around his desk for something, he said, "Please sit down."

Sam and Dean sat down, but Mel stayed standing since there weren't enough chairs. Once Jerry found what he was looking for - a CD, by the looks of it - he put it into a disk drive. "Normally I wouldn't have access to this. It's the cockpit voice recorder for United Britannia flight 2485. It was one of ours."

There was a lot of static on the recording, but Mel was able to make out a little bit: "_Mayday! Mayday! Repeat! 2485 - immediate instruction…may be experiencing some mechanical failure…_" And then a voice, so loud it hurt her ears, shouting, "_NO SURVIVORS! NO SURVIVORS! NO SURVIVORS!_" Mel clamped her ears shut, moaning slightly as she tried to block out the voice. Finally, it stopped.

"Mel, you okay?" Sam asked her worriedly.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

Jerry looked at her warily, but didn't comment about anything. "Took off from here, crashed about two hundred miles south. Now, they're saying mechanical failure. Cabin depressurized somehow. Nobody knows why. Over a hundred people on board. Only seven got out alive. Pilot was one. His name is Chuck Lambert. He's a good friend of mine. Chuck is, uh…well, he's pretty broken up about it. Like it was his fault."

"You don't think it was?" Sam asked.

"No, I don't."

"Jerry, we're gonna need passenger manifests, um, a list of survivors."

"Right and, uh, any way we can take a look at the wreckage?" Dean inquired.

"The other stuff is no problem. But the wreckage…fellas, the NTSB has it locked down in an evidence warehouse. No way I've got that kind of clearance."

Dean frowned, nodding. "No problem."

The boys confronted her during the car ride into town.

"Mel, that whooshing noise on the tape bothered you. Care to tell us why?" Dean asked.

Mel blinked. "So _that's_ what it was?"

"Why? What did it sound like to you?"

"It was…a voice. Deep, and gravelly. It kept shouting at the top of its lungs 'no survivors.'"

"'No survivors'?" Sam asked. "What does that mean? There were seven survivors."

Mel shrugged. "I have no clue."

For what seemed like the hundredth time in hours, Mel looked at her watch. 11:38 AM. Dean had been inside 'COPY JACK' to make fake IDs for over an hour and a half. Sam had played around with the cockpit tape and had found EVP on it; the voice said the same thing: "no survivors." While Sam had talked to one of the survivors' mothers on the phone, Mel did a little research of her own - the flight had crashed forty minutes into flight. Not that it meant anything significant so far, but Mel knew it was a Biblical number and you had to take all the theories into consideration.

"You've been in there forever." Mel's head snapped up at Sam's words from the book she was reading to see Dean _finally_ coming out of the shop. Mel set the book down on the seat next to her.

Dean held up the three new fake IDs. "You can't rush perfection."

"Homeland Security?" Sam took his ID. "That's pretty illegal, even for us."

The guys got into car. "All right, so, what do you got?"

Sam got out his laptop. "Well, there's _definitely_ EVP on the cockpit voice recorder."

"Yeah?" Dean asked.

"Listen."

He hit play on the tape, and the same scratchy voice Mel had heard earlier played, though thankfully much more quietly: "_No survivors!_"

"'No survivors'? Is that the same voice you heard at the hangar, Mel?" Dean asked.

Mel nodded. "Yeah, but much louder."

"So, what do you guys think? A haunted flight?"

"There's a long history of spirits and death omens on planes and ships, like phantom travelers," Sam said.

"Mm-hmm."

"Or remember flight 401?"

"Right. The one that crashed, the airline salvaged some of its parts, put it in other planes, then the spirit of the pilot and copilot haunted those flights."

"Right."

"Yep."

"Maybe we got a similar deal."

"You got anything, Mel?" Dean asked.

"Uh, it might not mean anything, but the plane crashed forty minutes into the flight, 'cause, you know, it's a Biblical number and all…"

"Right…" Dean nodded. "All right, so, survivors, which one do you want to talk to first?"

"Third on the list: Max Jaffey," Sam decided.

"Why him?"

"Well, for one, he's from around here. And two, if anyone saw anything weird, he did."

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, I spoke to his mother. And she told me where to find him."

"Where's that?"

"The Riverfront Psychiatric Hospital," the younger Winchester recited.

Dean started the car. "Well…one trip to the loony bin, comin' up."

They found Max easily enough - he was out in the garden, walking down a path.

"Max Jaffey?" Sam asked as they approached Max. Max looked like an average guy, other than the cane.

"Yeah?" Max queried, looking warily at the trio.

"We're with Homeland Security. Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?"

Max narrowed his eyes. "It takes three of you to ask me a coupla questions?"

"Oh, she's an intern trainee," Dean said, half-pointing at Mel, who did her best to suppress the glare she wanted to send him.

"Can I see some ID?"

Sam and Dean showed their ID, though Mel couldn't because she was an 'intern trainee' and 'didn't have one yet.'

Max nodded. "I don't understand, though. I already spoke with Homeland Security."

"Right. Some new information has come up. So if you could just answer a couple questions…"

"Just before the plane went down, did you notice anything…unusual?" Sam asked.

"Like what?" Max questioned back.

"Strange lights, uh, weird noises, maybe. Voices," Dean listed off.

"No, nothing."

They came up to a small round table, probably used for chess or something, and each of them took a seat in a chair around it.

"Mr. Joffey - "

"Jaffey," Max corrected Dean.

"Jaffey. You checked yourself in here, right?"

Max nodded.

"Can I ask why?"

"I was a little stressed. I survived a plane crash," Max answered dryly.

"Uh huh. And that's what terrified you? I mean, that's what you were afraid of?"

"I…I don't want to talk about this anymore."

"See, I think maybe you _did_ see something up there. We need to know what."

"No. No, I was…delusional. Seeing things."

Dean looked at Sam, then Mel, then looked at Sam again. "He was seeing things."

"It's okay," Sam told Max. "Then just tell us what you _thought_ you saw, please."

Max hesitated before answering. "There was…this - man. And, uh, he had these…eyes - these, uh…_black_ eyes. And I saw him - or I _thought_ I saw him…"

"What?" Dean prompted seriously.

"He opened the emergency exit." Max looked up at the older Winchester. "But that's…that's impossible, right? I mean, I looked it up. There's something like two tons of pressure on that door."

"Yeah."

"This man, uh, did he seem to appear and disappear rapidly? It would look something like a mirage?" Sam inquired.

"What are you, nuts?" Sam tilted his head, confused at Max's accusation. "He was a passenger. He was sitting right in front of me."

Mel gave a small smile. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Jaffey."

"So where to next?" Mel asked as she got in the Impala.

Sam and Dean got in the car, too, and Sam got his laptop out. "Well…first we need to find out who was sitting in front of Max. Second, we need to find out if he had any relatives."

"He's probably got a wife," Mel pointed out.

A couple minutes later, Sam spoke up. "Here we go; his name was George Phelps, forty years old…huh."

"What?" Dean asked.

"He seemed to have a normal life. He even had a wife, Elaine Phelps."

"And where does she live?" Sam read out the address for him. "All right, next stop: old dead man Phelps's place."

Mel raised a questioning eyebrow. "You know that's a bad joke, right?"

"Shut up." Mel could practically _hear_ the eye roll.

"So here we are," Sam said as the Impala pulled up in front of the house. "George Phelps, seat 20C."

"Hmm. Man, I don't care how strong you are," Dean remarked, then looked back to where Mel was sitting. "You stayin' or comin'?"

"Staying," she replied, grabbing her earlier discarded book from the seat. A couple chapters and ten minutes later, the boys returned to the car. "Anything?"

"Nope," Dean answered. "Guy was totally normal. We're gonna check out the wreckage, but first…we need something to wear."

The whole way to the airfield warehouses after they left the tailor shop, Mel couldn't help but giggle at how ridiculous they guys looked in business suits.

"Shut up," Dean snapped, parking the Impala in the airfield parking lot. "Now, remember - "

"Yeah, I know. If something goes wrong, or if I don't see you guys in at least fifteen minutes, take off and don't look back."

"Right."

The Winchesters got out of the car, and Mel moved to the front driver's seat, ready to turn the keys in the ignition if necessary. She kept her eyes on the door, waiting for them to get their asses back outside. Mel's stomach dropped when she noticed two _real_ Homeland Security agents approaching the building.

_Crap_, she thought, putting her hand on the keys. "C'mon, guys, hurry up," she muttered in a sing-song voice. A minute later, the alarm went off and Mel started the car when she saw Sam and Dean climbing over a security gate. "C'mon, c'mon…" No one was chasing them, so that was a plus. When they reached the car, Sam jumped into the front passenger seat and Dean dove into the backseat. Mel had slammed her foot down on the gas before Dean had even closed the back seat door.

"So, you find anything?" Mel asked as soon as they were safely back on the highway.

"Yeah. Some sort of yellow stuff," Sam said, holding up a vile indeed filled with rusty metal shards covered in some sort of yellow powder.

"What is it?" Mel said, glancing at it before turning her eyes back on the road.

"We don't know, which is why we need to head to Jerry's office," said Dean.

"Okie-dokie," Mel replied, taking the correct turnoff to the warehouse where the manager's office was. She parked the Impala outside the warehouse, turned it off, and the trio got out and made their way to the office. Dean knocked on the office door, and only had to wait a couple seconds for Jerry to answer.

"Have you figure out what it is?" the manager asked.

"No, uh, Jerry we were wondering if you could run this under a microscope for us?" Sam asked, holding up the vile.

"Sure, yeah, come in," Jerry said enthusiastically. Sam handed him the vile, and Jerry set up his microscope. "What's it from?"

"The emergency door handle," Mel answered. "Apparently, that's how the plain crashed - some random guy opened the emergency door…somehow."

Jerry frowned. "Well, I certainly hope you guys figure out what's doing this." He placed the sample under the microscope, and examined it. "Huh. This stuff is covered in sulfur."

"You're sure?" the younger Winchester asked seriously.

"Take a look for yourself."

There was banging, suddenly, from outside the office and a random man yelled, "You effin' piece of crap…!"

Jerry sighed. "If you guys will excuse me, I have an idiot to fire."

As the manager left, Dean and Mel went over and looked at the screen hooked up to the microscope, where it showed oddly textured yellow crap.

Dean looked through the microscope lens, then looked up and said, "Hmm. You know, there's not too many things that leave behind a sulfuric residue."

"Demonic possession?" Sam queried.

"It would explain how a mortal man would have the strength to open up an emergency hatch."

"It _is_ possible for a possessed person to have unusual strength," Mel stated.

"Yeah, but this goes way beyond floating over a bed or barfing pea soup. I mean it's one thing to possess a person, but to use them to take down an entire airplane?"

"You ever heard of something like this before?" Sam asked, shaking his head.

"Never," Dean responded.

Mel bit her lip. "Remember the Biblical number thing I was talking about earlier?" Both guys nodded. "Well, I was wondering if that meant something at all. Like…that's it's pattern, maybe."

Dean nodded. "It's possible."

Three hours and one booked and now cluttered with research motel room later, Mel, Dean, and Sam were in full research mode, finding anything they could that might possibly relate to something possessing people and purposely crashing ships, planes, anything basically.

"So, every religion in every world culture has the concept of demons and demonic possession, right?" Sam spoke up, leaning back in his chair as he looked at the screen of his computer. "I mean Christian, Native American, Hindu, you name it."

"Yeah, but none of them describe anything like this," Dean complained.

"Well, that's not exactly true. You see according to Japanese beliefs, certain demons are behind certain disasters, both natural and man-made. One causes earthquakes, another causes disease."

"He's right," Mel pointed out, though she didn't know why.

"And this one causes plane crashes?" Dean asked incredulously, and Sam sighed. Standing up, Dean continued, "All right, so, what? We have a demon that's evolved with the times and found a way to ratchet up the body count?"

"Yeah. You know, who knows how many planes it's brought down before this one?" At Sam's words, Dean snorted and stood up. "What?"

"I don't know, man. This isn't our normal gig. I mean, demons, they don't want anything, just death and destruction for its own sake. This is big. And I wish Dad was here."

"Yeah…Me too."

Dean's phone started to ring, and he answered it. "Hello? - Oh, hey, Jerry. - What…Jerry, I'm sorry. What happened? - Where'd this happen? - I'll try to ignore the irony in that. - Nothing. Jerry, hang in there, all right? - We'll catch up with you soon." Dean hung up.

"Another crash?" the younger Winchester inquired.

"Yeah. Let's go."

"Where?"

"Nazareth."

It was Mel's turn to snort. "I can definitely see the irony in _that_."

After checking out the crash sight, Mel, Sam, and Dean went back to Jerry's office, bringing yet another yellow powder sample with them.

"Sulfur?" Dean questioned Jerry as the older man looked through the microscope.

Jerry looked up an nodded.

"Well, that's great. All right, that's two plane crashes involving Chuck Lambert. This demon sounds like it was after him," Dean deducted.

Sam, who was sitting at Jerry's computer, countered, "With all due respect to Chuck, if that's the case, that would be the good news."

Mel furrowed her brow. "And the bad news would be…?"

"Chuck's plane went down exactly forty minutes into flight, just like flight 2485 did."

The female hunter snapped her fingers. "Told you it meant something."

"Forty minutes? What does that mean?" Jerry asked curiously.

"It's Biblical numerology. You know, Noah's ark, it rained for forty days. The number means death," the older Winchester explained.

"I went back, and there have been six plane crashes over the last decade that _all_ went down exactly forty minutes in."

"Any survivors?"

"No. Or not until now, at least, not until flight 2485, for some reason. On the cockpit voice recorder, remember what the EVP said?"

"'No survivors,'" Mel recited.

Dean looked deep in thought. "It's going after all the survivors. It's trying to finish the job."

It's late at night, and Sam and Mel have been talking on the phone with the remaining survivors, keeping them away from any planes until they got rid of the demon. Sam was just getting off the phone with the last person they could get a hold of (there was only one person that they couldn't get a hold of, which was sort of good).

"Really?" Sam was saying. "Well, thank you for taking our survey, and if you do plan to fly, please don't forget your friends at United Britannia Airline. Thanks." he hung up. "All right. That takes care of Blaine Sanderson and Dennis Holloway. They're not flying anytime soon."

"So our only wildcard is the flight attendant Amanda Walker," Dean stated.

"Right. Her sister Karen said her flight leaves Indianapolis at eight p.m. It's her first night back on the job."

Dean sighed. "That sounds like just our luck," he remarked sarcastically.

"Dean, this is a five hour drive, man, even with _you_ behind the wheel."

"Why don't you call Amanda's cell phone again, see if we can't head her off at the pass."

Sam scratched the back of his head. "I already left her three voice messages. She must have turned her cell phone off. God…we're never going to make it."

"Oh, we'll make it," Dean assured him.

They'd made it, all right - with thirty minutes to spare.

"Okay. We still have some cards to play," Dean mused. "We need to find a phone." Dean looked around, then noticed a courtesy phone. Mel and Sam followed as he ran over to it, then picked it up. "Hi. Gate thirteen. - I'm trying to contact an Amanda Walker. She's a flight attendant on flight, um…flight 4-2-4." It was about a minute before Amanda answered. "Miss Walker. Hi, this is Dr. James Hetfield from St. Francis Memorial Hospital. We have Karen here. - Nothing serious, just a minor car accident, but she was injured, so - - You what? - Uh, well…there must be some mistake." Mel leaned in closer so she could hear the other end of the conversation.

"_Is this one of Vince's friends?_" Mel heard.

"Guilty as charged," Dean lied.

"_Wow. This is unbelievable._"

"He's really sorry."

"_Well, you tell him to mind his own business and stay out of my life, okay?_"

"Yes, but…he really needs to see you tonight, so - "

"_No, I'm sorry. It's too late._"

"Don't be like that. Come on. The guy's a mess. Really. It's pathetic."

"_Really?_"

"Oh, yeah."

"_Look, I've got to go. Um…tell him to call me when I land._" Amanda hung up.

"No, no. Wait, Amanda. Amanda!" Dean shouted into the phone, though all that he got in reply was the dial tone. Frustrated, Dean slammed the phone on its cradle. "Damn it! So close."

Sam shook his head. "All right, it's time for plan B. We're getting on that plane."

"Whoa, whoa, now just hold on a second," Dean protested, eyes wide.

"Dean, that plane is leaving with over a hundred passengers on board, and if we're right…that plane is gonna crash."

"I know!" the older Winchester exclaimed.

"Okay. So we're getting on the plane, we need to find that demon and exorcise it. Look, I'll get the tickets. You and Mel get whatever you can out of the trunk. Whatever that will make it through security. Meet me back here in five minutes."

Dean just stared at his brother anxiously.

"Are you okay?" Sam asked.

"No…not really," the older Winchester replied in a tight voice.

"What? What's wrong?"

"Well, I kind of have this problem with, uh…" Dean made strange gestures with his hands.

"Flying? You're joking, right?" Mel deadpanned, staring at him with a shocked expression.

"Do I look like I'm joking? It's never really been an issue until now. Why do you think I drive everywhere?"

"All right. Uh, Mel and I'll go."

"What?"

"Or I can do with on my own."

"Do I get a say in this?" Mel requested.

"No," the brothers said together.

"What are you, nuts?" Dean demanded. "You said it yourself, the plane's gonna crash."

"Dean, we can all do it together, or I can do this one by myself. I'm not seeing a third option, here."

"Come on! Really? Man…" he whined.

Mel supposed they kind of lucky when they discovered it was a six-in-each-row kind of plane. Mel was in the window seat, Sam in the middle, and Dean was next to the aisle - he hadn't cared which seat he'd been assigned to, in his opinion he practically _owned_ that seat. Apparently, Dean was so scared shitless that he was even reading the _safety card_.

"Just try to relax," Sam muttered to him.

"Just try to shut up," Dean shot back.

The plane took off, and Dean flinched at every rumble and sound the plane made. Sam and Mel smirked at Dean's newfound phobia.

Eight minutes later, Dean is _still_ sitting in a ramrod straight position, faintly humming.

"You're humming Metallica?" Sam asked incredulously.

"Calms me down," his brother whispered.

"Look, man, I get you're nervous, all right? But you got to stay focused."

"Okay."

"I mean, we got thirty-two minutes and counting to track this thing down, or whoever it's possessing, anyway, and perform a full-on exorcism."

"Yeah, on a crowded plane. That's gonna be easy."

"Just take it one step at a time, all right? Now, who is it possessing?" Sam looked around at the passengers around them.

"Well, it's usually gonna be somebody with some sort of weakness, you know, a chink in the armor that the demon can worm through. Somebody with an addiction or some sort of emotional distress." Dean paused. "Or you can just ask Mel, she always seems to know who and who isn't possessed."

"Well, this is Amanda's first flight after the crash. If I were her, I'd be pretty messed up."

"Mm-hm." Dean turned to a passing blonde flight attendant. "Excuse me. Are you Amanda?"

"No, I'm not," she said.

"Oh, my mistake." The flight attendant walked away, and Dean looked toward the back of the plane. "All right, well, that's got to be Amanda back there."

"Well, what do you think, Mel?" Sam asked her, turning to look at her. "She possessed?"

In answer, Mel stood up and stretched her arms, subtly looking around at the passengers and crew - both in front and back of them. When she spotted the attendant Dean thought was Amanda, Mel didn't sense any possession coming from her. Sitting back down, she said, "No one I can see is possessed - Amanda included."

"So, if it's on the plane, it can be anyone. Anywhere," Sam concluded.

"Anyone I didn't see when I took a look around," Mel corrected him.

"Yeah."

The plane shook from turbulence. "Come on! That can't be normal!" Dean complained loudly.

Mel laughed while Sam said, "Hey, hey, it's just a little turbulence."

Dean glared daggers at his brother. "Sam, this plane is going to crash, okay? So quit treatin' me like I'm friggin' four!" he whisper-shouted.

"You _need_ to calm down."

"Well, I'm sorry I can't."

"Yes, you can."

"Dude, stow the touchy-feely, self-help yoga crap, it's not helping."

"Listen, if you're panicked, you're wide open to demonic possession, so you need to calm yourself down," Sam shot back seriously, getting in his brother's face to emphasize how serious he was. "Right now."

In response, Dean started taking long, slow breaths.

"Good. Now, I found an exorcism in here that I think is gonna work. The Rituale Romanum."

"What do we have to do?"

It's two parts. The first part expels the demon from the victim's body. It makes it manifest, which actually makes it more powerful."

"More powerful?"

"Yeah."

"How?"

"Well, it doesn't need to possess someone anymore. It can just wreak havoc on its own."

"I-I don't see how that's a good thing," Mel stuttered out, staring blankly at the brothers.

"Well, the second part sends the bastard back to hell once and for all," Sam reasoned.

"First thing's first," Dean stated. "We gotta find it."

Mel nodded. "I'll go take a quick look around."

The brothers let her out so she could walk up and down the aisle. She put her iPod on, ear buds in her ears, to make it look like she was taking a 'relaxing walk.' She slowly walked in-between the seats, taking care to subtly look at each person. So far, none that she could see was possessed. That is, until she reached the front of the plane.

The co-pilot was just coming out of the private bathroom at the front of the plane, and Mel could literally see evil and black just _radiating_ off of him like a nuclear reactor.

"Christo," she muttered. 'Christo' was God's name and Latin, and it was a subtle way to check for possession - demon's always turned black at the name, and sure enough, the co-pilot's eyes flicked to black. Mel swallowed audibly as the 'co-pilot' went into the cockpit. Quickly, the female hunter turned around and hurried back to Sam and Dean. "It's the co-pilot," she exclaimed quickly.

"What?" Sam asked.

"It's the co-pilot," she repeated.

"All right, we gotta get Amanda to help us," Dean decided.

Mel frowned. "Why her?"

"Because she was on flight 2485."

It was decided, and the trio made their way to the back of the plane.

"She's not gonna believe this," Sam whispered to Dean.

"Twelve minutes, dude," Dean shot back.

They reached the back of the plane, and Amanda noticed them. "Oh, hi. Flight's not too bumpy for you, I hope."

"Actually, that's kind of what we need to talk to you about," Dean admitted.

Sam closed the curtains that separated the back of the plane from the rest of it.

"Um, okay. What can I do for you?" Amanda questioned hesitantly.

"All right, this is gonna sound nuts, but we just don't have time for the whole 'the truth is out there' speech right now."

"All right, look, we know you were on flight 2485," Sam revealed.

Amanda's cheery smile disappeared. "Who are you people?"

"Now, we've spoken to some of the other survivors. We know something brought down that plane and it wasn't a mechanical failure."

"We need your help because we need to stop it from happening again. Here. Now," Dean informed the stewardess.

"I'm sorry, I-I'm very busy. I have to go back - " Amanda tried to go past Dean, who was blocking the exit, but he stopped her.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a second. I'm not gonna hurt you, okay? But listen to me, uh…The pilot in 2485, Chuck Lambert. He's dead."

"Wait. What? What, Chuck is dead?" the stewardess demanded, sounding a little close to tears now.

"He died in a plane crash. Now, that's two plane crashes in two months. That doesn't strike you as strange?"

"I - "

"Something was weird about 2485, Amanda," Mel interrupted her. "Now, maybe you could tell, maybe you couldn't, but there's something weird about this flight, too."

"Amanda, you have to believe us," Dean pressed.

Amanda took a few seconds before she answered. "On…on 2485, there was, uh, this man. He…had these eyes."

"Yes. That's exactly what we're talking about," Sam replied.

"I don't understand, what are you asking me to do?" Amanda demanded.

"Okay. The co-pilot, we need you to bring him back here," Dean told her.

"Why? What does he have to do with anything?"

"Don't have time to explain. We just need to talk to him. Okay?"

"How am I supposed to go in the cockpit and get the co-pilot - "

"It doesn't matter, just do whatever it takes. Tell him something's broken back here, anything to get him out of that cockpit," Mel answered.

"Do you know that I could lose my job if you - "

"Okay, well you're gonna lose a lot more if you don't help us out," Dean cut her off.

Amanda hesitated. "Okay," she whispered.

Amanda left, and the trio watched as she approached the cockpit. She returned with the 'co-pilot,' who asked. "Yeah, what's the problem?" Before Dean punched him, knocking him down. He pinned him down and put duct tape over his mouth.

"Wait. What are you doing? You said you were just gonna talk to him," Amanda protested.

"Oh, we're gonna talk to him," Dean shot back, splashing holy water onto the demon's skin, which sizzled as the water made contact with it.

"Oh, my God. What's wrong with him?" Amanda demanded, panicking slightly.

"Calm down, Amanda," Mel said, stepping in front of the stewardess. "They're gonna fix it."

"Well, I don't underst - I don't know - "

"I need you to wait outside the curtain with me, Amanda," Mel interrupted her. "Can you do that? We can't let anybody in. Can you do that with me, Amanda?"

"Okay. Okay."

Mel led the stewardess outside the curtain, and closed it. Pulling out her iPod, she stuck the right ear bud in her ear and waited for the boys to finish the exorcism. At some point in time, John's journal suddenly shot out from underneath the curtain. Mel went foreword, as if to grab it, but suddenly the plane pitched downward, causing Mel to pitch foreword, hitting her head on the leg of a seat. Stunned, all she could do was lay there as the whole interior of the plane went dark. She saw Sam shove past Dean and Amanda, diving for John's journal, and she saw Dean grab desperately onto the exit door, screaming.

Soon, the plane leveled out; Sam had completed the exorcism.

"Mel, you okay?" Dean called out to her.

Mel nodded slowly in response, breathing a sigh of relief. She always hated demons, and she was damn glad this one was gone for a long, long time.

An emergency landing was conducted, resulting in a direct turnaround back to the airport they'd come from - which was a good thing, since the Impala was there.

"Let's get out of here," Dean muttered, heading for the exit. Sam and Mel follow him. "You okay?" Mel can tell this question is meant for Sam.

Sam stopped walking and turned to look at his brother. "Dean, it…it _knew_ about Jessica."

"Sam, these things, they…they read minds. They lie. All right? That's all it was," Dean assured him.

"Yeah." Sam wasn't convinced.

"C'mon," Dean said, walking past him.

The drive from the airport was silent.

The next morning, Sam and Dean said goodbye to Jerry before leaving town and Mel waited in the Impala. After they left the airfield, Dean pulled the Impala over, something about them checking John's, their dad's, voicemail. When they got back into the car, Mel could tell they were pissed, though for what reason she couldn't tell.

She pulled her phone out and dialed John's most recent phone number. A voicemail came up: "_This is John Winchester. I can't be reached. If this is an emergency, call my son, Dean. 785-555-0179. He can help_."

Frowning, Mel started blankly at her phone before hanging up. John was on a lead on what killed Mary, his wife. That much was obvious. But how dangerous _was_ this lead if they couldn't even make contact with him?

It didn't make sense. Mel sighed, figuring they'd just have to wait and see what was to come.


	4. Skin

**Hey**_**,**_** y****'all! Here's the new chapter, review and let me know what you think :)**_  
_

**Disclaimer: I don't own _Supernatural_, blah, blah blah...**

* * *

_Pain_. That's all Mel could feel. The many times the man had cut into her skin, tortured her; perfect slits on her forearms, just enough to make her bleed, but not to bleed out; a couple of her fingers were broken; there were rope burns on her wrists and ankles from trying to wriggle out of her bonds; there were many lacerations on her abdomen, on her shoulders; Mel was getting lightheaded with dizziness. She could not even see what her attacker looked like, for she was blindfolded.

All she could think was, _why me? Why not someone else, _anyone_ else?_

Mel felt someone's hand on her arm - _his_ hand, the hand of her attacker.

"I'm sorry I have to do this," he whispered, almost inaudibly so Mel had no way of knowing who it was. "You're a very pretty girl, but you have to understand I have no choice." He started to remove the blind fold. "I want _my_ face to be the last thing you see, Melissa."

Then the cloth was removed from her eyes, and she gasped when she saw who it was: her best friend, Dean Winchester.

* * *

_One Week Earlier…_

It was about a week and a half after the phantom traveler incident. A few days ago, they'd put yet _another_ vengeful spirit to rest. This spirit is called Bloody Mary - the legend went that when she'd died, her spirit had been trapped in the mirror world forever, and whoever summoned her would have their eyes scratched out and be killed. At least…it _was_ a legend until Sam, Dean, and Mel had got wind of a guy, Mr. Shoemaker, dying of a supposed stroke that melted his eyeballs into sticky bloody goo. After some digging around, the trio had discovered that it was not the witch Bloody Mary from the legends, but a woman named Mary Worthington who had been murdered in front of a mirror some years ago. Overall, the Winchesters and Mel had managed to put Bloody Mary to rest.

Now, they were on the way to Bisbee, Arizona to look into a possible ghost situation. They were currently stopped at a gas station/convenience store, because the Impala was low on gas.

"Alright, I figure we'd hit Tucumcari by lunch, then head south, hit Bisbee by midnight," Dean said as he drove up next to a pump, looking at Sam as if he expected him to say something. The man in question was, apparently, completely absorbed in his phone. "Sam wears women's underwear."

"I'm listenin', I'm just busy," Sam mumbled, eyes still on the phone.

"Busy doing what?" Dean asked, getting out of the car.

"Reading emails."

"Emails from who?"

"From my _friends_ at Stanford," Sam shouted through the open window to Dean, who was by the pump getting ready to put it in the nozzle.

"You're kidding. You still keep in touch with your college buddies?"

"Why not?"

"Well, what exactly do you tell 'em?" You know, about where you've been, what you've been doin'?"

"I tell 'em I'm on a road trip with my big brother and an old friend. I tell 'em I needed some time off after Jess."

"Oh, so you lie to 'em." Dean leaned against the car.

"No. I just don't tell them…everything."

"Yeah, that's called lying," Dean informed him. "I mean, hey, man, I get it, telling' the truth is far worse."

"So, what am I supposed to do, just cut everybody out of my life?" At his brother's question, Dean shrugged. "You're serious?"

"Look, it sucks, but in a job like this, you can't get close to people," Dean explained. "That's why we never bothered to find Mel's family, 'cause she wanted to be a hunter. You can't get close to people, period."

"You're kind of anti-social, you know that?"

"Yeah, whatever." Dean shrugged.

Sam went back to looking at his phone. "God…"

"What?" Dean asked as Mel said, "What happened?"

"In this email form this girl, Rebecca Warren, one of those friends of mine."

"Is she hot?" Dean asked eagerly.

The younger Winchester ignored that comment. "I went to school with her and her brother, Zack. She says Zack's been charged with murder. He's been arrested for killing his girlfriend. Rebecca says he didn't do it, but…it sounds like the cops have a pretty good case."

"Dude, what kind of people are you hangin' out with?" Dean demanded, incredulous.

"No, man, I know Zack. He's no killer."

"You sure? 'Cause no matter how well you know someone, they could always turn out to be the bad guy," Mel reasoned.

"Mel, you're _not_ a serial killer. The first impression doesn't strike that way," Dean told her.

"Oh? Then how does it?" she asked, half-serious half-joking.

Dean blinked and then shook his head. "Anyway, maybe you know Zack as well as he knows you."

"They're in St. Louis. We're goin'," Sam decided.

Dean chuckled. "Look, sorry 'bout your buddy, okay? But this does no sound like our kind of problem."

"It is our problem. They're my friends."

"St. Louis is four hundred miles behind us, Sam."

In response, Sam gave his brother a stern look.

Using the mock-surrender gesture, Dean exclaimed, "Fine! But if it turns out to be nothing, or he actually did do it, don't you go cryin' to me."

Dean put the gas nozzle back on the pump and went inside the store to pay.

"What _was_ your first impression of me?" Mel said aloud thoughtfully.

Sam shrugged, and answered, "That you were some girl who looked like she'd had a bad run-in with the ground." It was true - Mel _had_ been covered in dirt that day. "I thought you were nice. And it was funny when Dean's attempts to hit on you failed."

Mel chuckled. "Yeah, I remember that. Remember when he'd said, 'Well, aren't you a pretty little thing to look at'?"

Sam laughed. "Yeah, and then you'd said something like 'How should I know, doofus? I haven't seen my reflection yet!'"

They both laughed, not noticing Dean approaching the car. "What's so funny you had to wait till I was gone to say it?" he demanded, getting in.

"Nothing," Mel told him innocently.

"Yeah, nothing my ass," the older Winchester grumbled, starting the engine, and pulled away from the gas station, the wheels of the car screeching, taking a sharp left and causing Mel to slide over the back seat and into the passenger side door.

"Dude, watch it!" she shouted, pushing away from the door. Dean sniggered, and she just glared at him.

* * *

Six hours later, they pulled up in front of a fancy two story house.

"You sure this is the place?" Dean asked, staring at the house.

"Yeah." Sam nodded.

They got out of the car, and went up to the door. Sam rang the doorbell, and the trio waited patiently. A cute blonde a little taller than Mel answered the door.

"Oh, my God. Sam!" she exclaimed happily.

"Well, if it isn't little Becky," Sam replied, smiling.

"You know you can do that 'little Becky' crap," Becky replied. She and Sam hugged.

"I got your email," Sam told her, pulling away.

"I didn't think that you would come here."

"Dean. Older brother." Dean held his hand out, and Becky shook it.

"Hi."

"Hi."

"Melissa." Mel stated from behind the guys. "The shorter-than-she'd-like-to-be old friend."

"We're here to help," Sam said. "Whatever we can do."

"Come in," Becky said, smiling.

They all followed Becky inside the house, and Mel closed the front door. The house was like any other house, really, but think…rich people house.

"Nice place," Dean commented.

"It's my parents'. I was just crashing here for the long weekend when everything happened. I decided to take the semester off. I'm gonna stay until Zack's free," Becky explained, leading them through the house.

"Where're your folks?" Sam inquired.

"They live in Paris for half the year, so they're on their way home now for the trial." Becky walked over to the island counter in the kitchen. "Do you guys want a beer or something?"

Dean smiled. "Hey - "

"No thanks," Sam interrupted him, and Mel smirked slightly. "So…tell us what happened."

"Well, um…Zack had came home, and he found Emily tied to a chair. And she was beaten up and bloody, and she wasn't breathing, and so, he called 911, and the police - they showed up, and they arrested _him_. But, the thing is, the only way that Zack could've killed Emily is if he was in two places at the same time. The police - they have a video. It's from the security tape from across the street. And it shows Zack coming home at 10:30. No, Emily was killed just after that, but I swear, he was here with me, having a few beers until at _least_ after midnight." By the time Becky was finished, she was close to tears.

"You know, maybe we could see the crime scene. Zack's house," Sam suggested.

"We could," Dean remarked.

"I mean, why? I mean, what could you do?" Becky inquired curiously.

"Well, me and Mel, not much. But Dean's a cop."

Dean laughed, a little nervously. "Detective, actually."

"Really?" Becky asked, and Dean nodded. "Where?"

"Bisbee, Arizona. But I'm off duty now."

"You guys, it's so nice to offer, but I just - I don't know," Becky protested.

"Beck, look," Sam spoke up. "I know Zack didn't do this. Now, we have to find a way to _prove_ that he's innocent."

Becky looked at Sam, Dean, then Mel. "Okay…I'm gonna go get the keys." She turned and walked down the hall through the dining room.

Dean whistled lowly. "Oh, yeah, man, you're a real straight shoot with you friends."

"Look, Zack and Becky need our help," Sam stated.

"I just don't think this is our kind of problem," the older Winchester shot back, shrugging.

"Two places at once? We've looked into less."

"Hey," Mel spoke up. "At least it's _something_ to entertain our bored and brainwashed minds with."

"Did you just say you're brainwashed?" Becky asked, appearing in the doorway.

Mel shrugged. "Figure of speech, so to speak. I think everyone is brainwashed in some small way."

And with that morbid thought planted in everyone's minds, Mel walked cheerily out of the house.

* * *

The ride to Zack's house was awkward. Not only had Mel and Becky had to share the back seat, Mel had to hide every weapon she owned under the front seats and hope the blonde wouldn't notice them. Plus, Becky kept making comments and asking why she wasn't wearing a seat belt. In response, Mel would grunt and mutter something along the lines of "free country".

They pulled up in front of Zack's house, and they got out of the car.

"You sure this is ok?" Becky asked Dean as they stood staring at the apartment complex where Zack's apartment was.

"Yeah. I am an officer of the law."

They walked up to the apartment door, and Becky let them in. Mel entered the house first, ducking under the police line that was taped across the doorway. The sight was horrible - blood was smeared across the walls and the furniture, and a trail of blood led from the kitchen to maybe on of the bedrooms down the hall. Dean came inside, then Sam. Becky, however, was still standing on the front porch.

"Beck, you wanna wait outside?" Sam asked her quietly.

The blonde shook her head. "No. I wanna help." She ducked under the police tape and came inside, and took a tearful look around.

"Tell us what else the police said," Sam asked her.

"Well, there's no sign of a break-in. They say that Emily let her attacker in. The lawyers - they're already talking about a plea bargain." Becky paused, looking around the room tearfully. "Oh, God…"

"Look, Beck, if Zack didn't do this, it means someone else did. Any idea who?" At the younger Winchester's question, Becky shook her head, then seemed to remember something.

"Um, there was something, about a week before. Somebody broke in here and stole some clothes - Zack's clothes. The police - they don't think it's anything. I mean, we're not that far from downtown. Sometimes people get robbed."

Mel followed Sam over by the fridge, where he was looking at a picture of Becky, Zack, and himself.

"He looks like a nice guy," she commented.

"He didn't do it," Sam mumbled.

"I know," Mel replied. "Someone can't just out of the blue become a murderer. Something has to happen to them - whether it be depression, or a bad childhood…something makes them snap. He has a happy life, which is how I _know_ Zack didn't do it."

Dean came up next to Mel. "So, the neighbor's dog went psycho right around the time Zack's girlfriend was killed."

"Animals _can_ have a sharp sense of the paranormal," Sam replied.

"Yeah, maybe Fido saw somethin'."

Sam smirked. "So, you think maybe this _is_ our kind of problem?" he asked dryly.

"No," Dean shook his head. "Probably not. But we should look at the security tape, you know, just to make sure."

"Yeah."

"Yeah," Dean echoed, just as Becky walked over to them. "So, the tape. The security footage - you think maybe your lawyers could get their hands on it, 'cause I just don't have that kind of jurisdiction."

"I've already got it," she admitted. "I didn't wanna say something in front of the cop." Dean laughed at her comment. "I stole it off the lawyer's desk. I just had to see it for myself."

"All right."

The Winchesters, Mel, and Becky left the crime scene. On the way down the path back to the car, the neighbors dog growled and barked at Mel furiously.

"Geez, what's _his_ problem," she grumbled, moving to hide behind Sam, who was nearest to her at that time.

Sam smirked. "Are you not a dog person?"

"No. Big dogs just freak me out," Mel protested; she like small dogs, not big dogs that barked their brains out at you and intimidated you to the point where you were scared shitless. "In any case, don't bother _it_, and _it_ won't bother you."

"You know that's a saying for wasps and other types of bees, right?"

Mel grimaced. "Shut up."

In reply, Sam just chuckled.

* * *

After they got back to Becky's parents' place, she got out the security tape and they watched it in the living room.

A few minutes into the tape, which there had been nothing, Becky announced, "Here he comes." On the tape, Zack was walked up the path to his apartment.

"22:04," Dean said, referencing to the timestamp, "that's just after ten. You said time of death was about 10:30."

Becky nodded. "Our lawyers hired some kind of video expert. He says the tapes authentic. It wasn't tampered with."

And then there it was - if Mel would have blinked, she'd have missed it. For a fraction of a second, as Zack faced on of the cameras, his eyes flashed silver.

Sam seemed to noticed it, too, because he turned to Becky and said, "Hey, Beck, can we take those beers now?"

"Oh, sure." the blonde got up from the couch and turned to go to the kitchen.

"Hey," Sam spoke up, and she turned around. "Maybe some sandwiches, too?"

Becky laughed slightly. "What do you think this is, Hooters?" she turned and left the room.

Dean laughed, saying, "I wish." He, Sam, and Mel all got closer to the TV. "What is it?"

"Check this out." Sam rewound the tape, and replayed it in slow motion. Again, Zack's eyes flashed silver. The younger Winchester paused the tape.

"Well, maybe it's just a camera flare," Dean suggested.

"That's not like any camera flare I've ever seen. You know, a lot of cultures believe that a photograph can catch a glimpse of the soul."

"Right."

"Remember that dog was freakin' out? Maybe he saw this thing. Maybe this is some kind of dark double of Zack's, something that looks like him but isn't him."

"Like a Doppelganger."

"Yeah. It'd sure explain how he was two places at once."

Mel studied the paused tape. "So, if that isn't a camera flare…what is it?"

The guys shrugged. Translation: they had no clue.

* * *

The next morning, they were up early. And Mel and Dean weren't happy about it. Mel had a better excuse than Dean, however, because she'd _finally_ gotten a good night's sleep with absolutely zero dreams. They were back at Zack's house because apparently Sam wanted to check something out.

"Alright, so what are we doin' here at 5:30 in the morning?" Dean asked as he got out of the car. Mel got out and sat down on the hood, a Monster energy drink in fingerless-gloved hand.

"I realized something. The videotape shows the killer goin' in, but not comin' out," Sam told them.

"So, he came out the back door?" Dean suggested, taking a sip of his coffee.

"Right. So, there should be a trail to follow. A trail the _police_ would never pursue," Sam mused, going across the street to the lot behind Zack's apartment.

"'Cause they think the killer never left. And they caught your friend Zack inside," Dean finished. "I still don't know what we're doin' here at 5:30 in the morning," he mumbled before taking another sip of coffee.

"Who knows what's goin' on in his head." Mel shrugged before a large gulp of her drink; she _needed_ to wake up, she was so tired. She watched as Sam looked around, noticing that he was staring at a telephone pole with a dark stain on it.

Sam nodded his head at the stain. "Blood. Somebody came this way."

"So? There's nothing over here," Mel replied just before an ambulance drove by. Mel watched it turn the corner of the road as Sam and Dean exchanged looks. They were all thinking the same thing: something was up.

The ambulance had parked within walking distance of where they were, so they strolled down the street to where a bunch of people were gathered.

"What happened?" Sam asked a random woman.

"Oh, he tried to kill his wife," she said. "Tied her up and beat her."

"Really?"

The woman nodded. "Yeah, I used to see him going to work in the morning. He'd wave, say hello. He seemed like such a nice guy."

Mel looked away from the woman to watch as an Asian man was escorted into a police car.

It was sort of an unconscious decision, but almost immediately, the three split up and started to investigate. Sam and Mel looked around for any sign someone came out the back door while Dean went to go talk to the police.

While looking around, Mel noticed some blood smeared on the wall. _Weird_, she thought. She climbed up on top of the garbage can to look at the blood. After glancing at it, she looked up and noticed an open window.

"Hey," she spoke up, getting Sam's attention. "I think I know how he got out without being noticed."

Sam nodded.

They finished looking through the alley, and met up with Dean.

"Hey," the older Winchester said. "Remember when I said this wasn't our kind of problem?"

"Yeah," Sam replied.

"Definitely our kind of problem."

"What'd you find out?"

"Well, I just talked to the patrolman who was first on the scene, heard this guy, Alex's story. Apparently the dude was driving home from a business trip when his wife was attacked."

"Two places at once," Mel muttered.

"Exactly. Then he sees himself in the house, police think he's a nut job."

"Two dark doubles attacking loved ones in exactly the same way," Sam mused, pacing a bit.

"Could be the same thing doin' it, too," Dean suggested.

Mel raised a questioning eyebrow. "Shape Shifter?" Dean shrugged. "Those things that can make itself look like anyone?"

"Every culture in the world has a Shape Shifter lore. You know, legends of creatures who can transform themselves into animals or other men."

"Right, skinwalkers, werewolves," Sam replied.

"We've got two attacks within blocks of each other. I'm guessin' we've got a shape shifter prowlin' the neighborhood."

"Let me ask you this: in all this shape shifter lore, can any of them fly?"

"Not that I know of."

"I picked up a trail here. Someone dropped out the window, there, ran by the back of this building and headed off this way."

"Just like Zack's house," Mel added.

"And, just like at Zack's house, the trail suddenly ends. I mean, whatever it is just…disappeared."

"Well, there's another way to go - down," Dean remarked with a quirky contemplative look.

All three of them looked down at the street, and noticed a manhole right next to Sam's feet. Without hesitation, Sam and Dean removed the manhole cover. All three of them looked down into the sewer with disgust.

"Well…" Dean spoke up, looking up at Mel with a charming smile. "Ladies first."

Scowling, Mel set her Monster drink on the ground, gave him the finger before climbing down the ladder, and was instantly hit with the smell of poop and butt. "Oh-ho, yuck…!" she muttered, covering her mouth with her hand. "C'mon!" she exclaimed loudly to the guys, who were still looking down into the hole like it was the most vile thing on earth. "_I'm_ down here, which means it isn't _that_ bad." She laughed pitifully. "Oh, yes it is," she mumbled to herself.

After the boys finally figured out that their reputation was at stake for being afraid of a sewer that a _girl_ had enough guts to down into but not them, they finally dragged their asses down into the sewer.

"I bet this runs right by Zack's house, too," Sam guessed. "The shape shifter could be using the sewer system to get around."

Sam went over to stand by Mel and Dean, who were looking at something on the ground.

"I think you're right," Dean informed his brother. "Look at this."

He and Sam bent down next to a pile of blood and skin on the ground that Mel and Dean had found.

"Is this from his victims?" Sam queried slowly, disgusted.

Mel watched as Dean took out his pocket knife and used it to pick up some of the goo. "You know, I just had a sick thought," he declared. "When the shape shifter changes shape…maybe it sheds."

"That is sick," Sam muttered at the same time Mel said, "I am so glad I'm human."

* * *

After they'd escaped the premises known as the city sewer, the trio returned to the Impala. Mel, who was happy her Monster drink hadn't been touched, lounged on the hood occasionally sipping from her drink as Sam and Dean talked by the trunk.

"Well, there's one thing I learned from Dad, is that no matter what kind of shape shifter it is, there's one sure way to kill it," she heard Dean saying.

"Silver bullet to the heart," Sam answered.

"That's right," Dean replied just as the younger Winchester's cell phone rang.

"This is Sam," he said, answering the phone. "We're near Zack's, we're just checkin' some things out. - What are you talkin' about? - Why would you do that? - Beck - -We're tryin' to help. - Beck, I'm sorry, but -." Apparently, Becky had hung up, because Sam sighed in a defeated way and lowered his phone away from his ear.

"I hate to say it, but that's exactly what I'm talkin' about. You lie to your friends because if they knew the real you, they'd be freaked. It's just - it'd be easier if - "

"If I was like you," Sam finished, deadpanning.

"Hey, man, like it or not, we are not like other people. But I'll tell you one thing. This whole gig - it ain't without perks." He held up a gun, which Sam took and put in the back of his jeans. "C'mon, Mel."

Mel, who already had her gun loaded with silver bullets, hopped down from the car. But, as luck would have it, she landed wrong on her right foot, and with a sickening crack, it could no longer support her weight.

"Ow!" she exclaimed involuntarily, causing the boys to whirl around. "Damn foot," she muttered, sitting up.

"Mel, you okay?" Sam and Dean were by her in an instant.

"Yeah…just a sprain."

Sam took off her tennis shoe and examined her foot. "Uh, Mel, that's no sprain."

Mel frowned. "It ain't?" Warily, she looked down at her foot to see it was twisted at the ankle in an awkward position. She frowned. "Since it's broken, shouldn't I be bawling my eyes out?"

"Probably, since you're a girl," Dean answered, shrugging. If looks could kill, Dean would be dead from the look Mel gave him. "Let's get you back to the motel."

And so, Sam and Dean hauled her into the back seat before taking off to the motel. While Sam set her foot and splinted it, Dean gave her a bottle of whiskey to drink so the pain wouldn't be as bad.

"Just get some rest," Sam said. "Dean and I'll go look for that shape shifter, we'll be back in a bit."

"Yeah," Mel sighed, feeling a little loopy from the whiskey. "See ya later, alligator." Yeah, alcohol had weird affects on her.

All afternoon, Mel watched TV and wrote some more in her book. She was just finishing up writing their run-in with the Woman in White. She got no word from the boys all day, but that was normal. So why was that thought bugging her constantly? Feeling like a total idiot for doing it, she grabbed her phone and called Dean.

"Mel, is something wrong?" he asked immediately after answering on the second ring.

"No…" she trailed off.

"Then why'd you call?"

Mel shrugged, then realized he couldn't see her. "I've just got this…feeling. Y'know, like something bad's about to happen."

"It's probably nothing," the older Winchester assured her. "Listen, I gotta go. Sammy and I are on our way back to the Impala."

"'K," Mel replied, hanging up, and went back to her computer. Fifteen minutes later, someone knocked on the door.

Painfully, Mel got up and limped her way to the door. She grabbed her gun from the table, and slowly opened the door. Mel never got the chance to see who it was before she felt a sharp pain on the side of her head and everything went black.

* * *

_Present Time…_

"I'm sorry I have to do this," her attacker whispered, almost inaudibly so Mel had no way of knowing what his voice sounded like. "You're a very pretty girl, but you have to understand I have no choice." He started to remove the blind fold. "I want _my_ face to be the last thing you see, Melissa."

Then the cloth was removed from her eyes, and she gasped when she saw who it was: her best friend, Dean Winchester.

Though, Mel knew better enough to know it was the shape shifter. Tied to a chair, being beaten to death…

"You're not Dean," Mel spat through her gag, earning her a punch to the side of her face.

"Oh, I _am_ Dean," the shape shifter replied. "You see, I love you like the little sister I've never had. But…there's also a tiny part of him that loves you in a whole different way. Which makes this so much harder." The shape shifter held up a curved hunting knife and studied it. "But I gotta do what I gotta do." He moved toward her, knife in hand.

Suddenly, the door bursts open and what looks like a S.W.A.T. team barges into the room, and the shape shifter bolts to the only room available - the bathroom.

Mel couldn't see what was happening, but from all the shouting and the shooting, she assumed the shape shifter got away.

"Shh, it's okay, you're okay," one of the men in a S.W.A.T. uniform told her quietly. That's when Mel realized this whole time that that sad whimpering noise in the background had been _her_. "You're safe, we've got you."

* * *

Sam and Dean, having finally escaped were now walking through the streets, trying to figure out their next game plan. They stopped in front of an electronic store television display when they saw what was on the news.

"_An anonymous tip led police to a home on the main road, where a S.W.A.T. team discovered a local woman bound and gagged. Her attacker, a white male, approximately twenty-four to thirty years of age, was discovered hiding in her motel room_," the reporter announced, and a sketch of Dean appeared on the screen.

"Man! That's not even a good picture," Dean complained while Sam looked around cautiously, as if anyone might recognize his brother.

"It's good enough," Sam informed him, turning to walk into a nearby alley.

"Man!" he heard Dean whine before following him. As they walked swiftly down the alley, Dean stepped into a puddle. "Gah! Come on…"

"Come on," Sam paused, lost in thought at the revelation that Mel was still alive. "They said attempted murder. At least we know - "

"I didn't kill her," Dean finished.

"They'll probably keep Mel under observation at the hospital because of her foot, we'll see if she's all right in the morning," Sam decided.

"All right, but first I wanna find that handsome devil and kick the holy crap out of him," Dean exclaimed, fuming.

"We have no weapons," Sam reminded his brother. "No silver bullets."

They stopped walking. "Sam, the guy's walkin' around with my face, okay, it's a little personal, I wanna find him," Dean shot back at him.

Sam nodded. "Okay. Where do we look?"

"Well, we could start with the sewers," his older brother suggested.

"We have no weapons," Sam repeated. "He stole our guns, we need more." That's when Sam remembered he didn't remember what happened to the Impala. "The car?"

"I'm bettin' he drove over to the motel."

"The news said he fled on foot. I bet it's still parked there."

Dean clenched his fists angrily. "Oh, the thought of him drivin' my car," he growled.

"All right, come on," Sam said, resuming his previous gait.

"It's killin' me!" Dean whined.

"Let it go," Sam told him sharply.

* * *

They were running down an alley near the motel, which was basically a stretch of asphalt between a storage garage and a fence. Finally, though, they spotting the Impala.

"Oh, there she is!" Dean exclaimed, relieved. "Finally something went right tonight. But, as luck would have it, a police car pulled up next to the Impala, it's lights flashing.

Sam resisted the urge to roll his eyes and say "You were saying?" but remained silent.

"Oh, crap," Dean muttered, as the turned around to see yet another police car pull up - it was an ambush. "This way, this way." The ran over to the fence.

"Look, you go. I'll hold 'em off," Sam told him.

"What are you talking about? They'll catch you!"

"Look, they can't hold me. Just go, keep out of sight. Meet me at Rebecca's." As Dean started to climb over the fence, Sam shouted, "Dean!" Dean turned around. "Stay out of the sewers alone." Dean said nothing, and climbed over the fence. "I mean it!"

"Yeah, yeah!" shouted his now out-of-sight brother.

"Don't move!" Sam heard a police officer shout behind him. "Keep your hands where I can see 'em!"

Reluctantly, the younger Winchester raised his hands.

* * *

Mel was expecting to wake up to beeping machines and all that hospital crap. She was expecting to wake up to Sam and Dean by her bedside. Heck, she was expecting to wake up in a bed, period. She wasn't expecting to wake up, hand and feet bound, sitting up and covered with a tarp. She wasn't expecting to feel that someone was right next to her.

Slowly, and painfully, Mel worked to get the tarp off of her head. Once she did, the smell hit her full force, and she realized where she was - the sewer. _Where_ in the sewer, though, she didn't know. She looked to her right and saw another person, covered in a tarp, was shivering violently. She helped uncover them, and was shocked to see it was Becky.

"Becky?" Mel asked hoarsely.

"It's Mel, right?" Mel nodded. "I don't know what happened; I was walking home, and then everything went white. Someone hit me over the head, and I wound up here just in time to see that _thing_ turn into me. I don't know, how is that even possible?" she demanded.

Mel grimaced as she tried to get in a more comfortable sitting position, and worked to untie the ropes around her wrists. "That thing is called a shape shifter. It can change itself to look like any human being - doesn't matter what the race, hair color, weight or anything else is."

"So…it wasn't Zack that killed Emily, it was the…shape shifter," Becky guessed.

Mel nodded. "Yeah. You hear of that Asian guy who tried to kill his wife?" Becky nodded. "Same thing - the shape shifter. Its way of killing is changing into someone, and then tying one of their loved ones to a chair and beating them to death." Mel shivered involuntarily at the memory of how _she'd_ almost been beaten to death not 24 hours ago. When she couldn't get the ropes undone, Mel groaned in frustration.

"What is it?" Becky asked.

"These ropes - I can't get them off." Mel chuckled morbidly. "That shape shifter is _good_."

"Melissa? Rebecca?" came Dean's voice, and he rushed over to them. "What happened?"

Becky, now crying with relief, quickly repeated her story to the older Winchester. "Mel said that it's a shape shifter. Is that true?"

"Yeah, but we'll explain that later," Dean told her as he finished untying her. Then, he started untying Mel. "I thought you were in the hospital."

"I was," Mel explained. "But I went to sleep, 'cause you know how hospital drugs make me loopy and sleepy, and then the next thing I know I'm in the sewer and _Becky_, of all people, is next to me."

"Okay, but we've gotta hurry," Dean replied as he finished untying his friend. "Sam went to see Becky. Can you guys walk?"

Becky nodded, and Mel answered, "Yes, with help."

* * *

There was no question to whether Dean broke the speed limit on the way to Rebecca's house or not. Luckily, no cops even tried to stop them. The Impala screeched to a halt in front of the house, and Dean launched himself out of the car, not even bothering to close the door. He even had his gun out already.

Mel and Becky followed him at a much slowly pace - Becky had to help Mel limp up the walkway. Then, two gunshots sounded out, and that only made Mel limp even faster. When they reached the living room, Dean was just lowering his gun. The shape shifter was laying sprawled across a table, two gunshot wounds in its chest. Sam was laying on the floor, his face bloody, but he was alive.

"Sam!" Becky exclaimed, rushed to her friend's side.

Mel just leaned against the doorframe, watching Dean as he went over to the shape shifter and plucked his amulet necklace off its neck. He gave a knowing nod to his younger brother, and then gave a reassuring grin at Mel; the shape shifter was dead.

* * *

The next morning, they were ready to leave. Sam was explaining to Becky what the hell it was he did for a living, while Dean looked over a map on the hood of the Impala. Mel just lounged in the back seat, relaxing her sore foot and resting her eyes. It was silent for a long while as they drove out of St. Louis - for good, hopefully. That long while gave Mel some time to think over something the shape shifter said, saying something about Dean loving her in a way other than just the little sister he never had. What was up with that? Was it lying? Mel sort of hoped it was, because Dean was only just a big brother to her…right?


	5. Home

**Hi! Me again. Here's another chapter...tell me what you think :)**_  
_

**Disclaimer: Yeah. I own nothing besides Mel.**

* * *

_I will never look at bugs the same way again_, Mel thought as she collapsed onto the pull out in their motel room. Their last case had been surprisingly short, yet incredibly disgusting.

In a nutshell, there was a curse on this land made sacred by some local Indians, like, hundreds of years ago. Any time white people lived on that land, it would 'activate' a curse that unleashed bug fury on people, one person each weeknight. On Friday, the final weeknight, a whole swarm of bugs gone Terminator would come and eat the remained people alive. Mel decided that she hated any kind of bug imaginable now.

It wasn't too late at night, but Dean had been getting exhausted and wouldn't let anyone else drive, so they decided to book a motel room for the night. Unfortunately, the motel was next to the highway, which meant semi trucks _constantly_ passing by said motel. Which also meant that it took a while for Mel to fall asleep while the boys fell asleep right away, almost as if the did it at will.

But, when the female hunter was _almost_ asleep, Sam bolted upright, breathing heavily.

"You all right?" Mel whispered, sitting up to watch him (not in a creepy way).

Sam nodded, and laid back down. Mel just sat there for a few seconds before laying back down and, surprisingly, fell asleep instantly.

The next morning, Mel had gone to the nearby gas station to grab some coffee for the boys, an 'Assault' (cherry) flavored Monster drink for her, and breakfast. While she was getting the boy's coffee, her cell phone rang. Since she was so busy, she'd took no time to see the caller I.D.

"Hello?" she asked, cradling it between her ear and her shoulder.

"_Mel, it's John_."

Mel nearly dropped the coffee. "J-John? Where are you? Sam and Dean are scared shitless that you're dead!" Hurriedly, the female hunter finished up making the coffees and moved towards the cashier, carrying the bag of doughnuts, her Monster drink, and the coffees. She dumped everything on the counter and dug out her wallet, all the while listening to what the elder Winchester had to say.

"_I can't tell you where I am. It's too dangerous_."

"Well, then, why're you calling?"

"_I think I have a lead on your family_."

_What? How? I chose not to find my family!_ Mel thought, confusion on her face.

"That'll be seven eighty-eight, ma'am," the cashier announced, bringing her out of her thoughts. Mel gave him the money in cash - she hated the credit card scams as much as Sam.

"I-I thought we'd agreed we weren't going to find them," Mel stuttered out.

"_We did_," John said, "_though, I more or less stumbled upon this family in Elko, Nevada_."

"Would you like a bag, ma'am?" the cashier asked.

Mel looked up briefly. "For the doughnuts and the energy drink, yeah." Then, she returned to her conversation with the elder hunter. "Nevada? I was no where near Nevada when you found me."

"_It doesn't make sense to me, either, but their daughter, back then a twenty year old, named Melissa Smith, went missing 'bout six years ago. Even if that _was_ a coincidence, it'd sure be helluva one. I've even seen pictures, and their daughter sure looks like you_."

Mel shook her head, taking the plastic bag from the cashier and the coffees from the counter. "How in hell do you expect me to meet these people?"

"_Well, I'm in Lawrence with an old friend right now. The couple is staying at the motel, but they're in the other room right now._"

"And what about Sam and Dean?"

John sighed. "_Come up with some sort of excuse. They can't know I called you._"

"Why?"

"_It's too dangerous._"

That sentence made Mel stop right in her tracks halfway back to their motel. "What? It's 'too dangerous'? Sure, it's fine to call me, but calling Sam and Dean? No way, sir, _too dangerous_."

"_Mel, this is serious. Where are you guys?_"

"Oklahoma."

"_You're closer than I thought_." John sounded surprised. "_Just…get here soon_." he didn't wait for an answer; he just…hung up.

"Dammit," Mel muttered, resuming her pace to the motel.

When she got back, Sam was sitting on his bed drawing on a note pad and Dean was sitting at the table using her laptop to find some possible cases.

"A fishing trawler found off the coast of Cali - its crew vanished. And, uh, we got some cattle mutilations in West Texas." Mel handed him his coffee as she passed by. She went over and sat on Dean's bed, putting Sam's coffee on the nightstand in between the beds. "Hey." Sam looked up from the notepad. "Am I boring you with this hunting evil stuff?"

"No, I'm listening. Keep going," the younger Winchester answered.

"And, here, a Sacramento man shot himself in the head." Dean held up three fingers. "Three times." Dean waved the same arm around. "Any of these things blowin' up your skirt, pal?"

Sam ignored his brother, studying the notepad intensely. "Wait, I've seen this."

"Seen what?" Mel asked, trying to look at the paper.

Sam ignored her question, got off the bed, and made a beeline for his duffel bag.

"What're you doing?" Dean asked, taking a sip of his coffee.

Mel watched as Sam grabbed a photo of the Winchester family in a yard and compared it to a drawing of a tree on the notepad.

"Guys, I know where we have to go next," Sam announced.

"Where?" Mel asked.

"Back home - back to Kansas."

_Well, that saves _me_ an awkward conversation_, Mel decided mentally.

"Okay, random," Dean mumbled. "Where'd that come from?"

Sam rushed over to the table and showed his brother the photo. "All right, um, this photo was taken in front of our old house, right? The house where Mom died?"

"Yeah."

"And it didn't burn down, right? I mean, not completely, they rebuilt it, right?"

"I guess so, yeah. What the hell are you talkin' about?"

"Okay, look, this is gonna sound crazy but…the people who live in our old house - I think they might be in danger."

"Why would you think that?" Dean asked.

_Okay, awkward conversation for Sam_, Mel thought smugly.

"Uh…it's just, um…look, just trust me on this, okay?" Sam walked hurriedly away from the table, grabbed his duffel and started to look through it.

"Wait, whoa, whoa, trust you?" Dean demanded incredulously, following his brother.

"Yeah," Sam replied, still searching through his bag.

"Com on, man, that's weak. You gotta give me a little bit more than that."

"I can't really explain it, is all."

"Well, tough. I'm not goin' anywhere until you do."

Sam sighed, and looked over at Dean, who was waiting for an answer expectantly.

"I have these nightmares…" Sam said slowly.

The older Winchester nodded. "I've noticed."

"And sometimes…they come true."

Mel was so stunned, she almost fell off the bed.

"Come again?" she heard Dean ask after a minute.

"Look, Dean…I dreamt about Jessica's death - for _days_ before it happened."

The older Winchester looked like he didn't know what to say. "Sam, people have weird dreams, man. Hell, _Mel_ does. I'm sure it's just a coincidence." He sat down on the bed next to Mel.

"No, I dreamt about the blood dripping, her on the ceiling, the fire, everything, and I didn't do anything about it 'cause I didn't believe it. And now I'm dreaming about that tree, about our house, and some woman inside screaming for help. I mean, that's where it all started, man, this has to mean something, right?"

Mel, sensing a 'heart-to-heart chick-flick' moment coming, excused herself. "I'll just…wait out in the car." She grabbed her bag, and computer, and went outside.

Once outside, she deposited her things in the back and dialed John's number. He answered on the third ring.

"_You guys coming to Lawrence?_" he asked immediately.

"Mm-hmm. I didn't even have to say anything," Mel answered.

"…_Did Sam have a vision?_"

Taken aback, Mel asked, "How did you know?"

"_I've known for a while - don't tell him, though. So, you're coming?_"

"Yeah, probably. Apparently, something's goin' on at your old house, so Sam and Dean are gonna check that out."

"_When d'you expect to be here?_"

Mel shrugged. "I dunno. 'Bout five hours, maybe?"

"_We'll meet you at the motel_." John hung up without waiting for a response.

Mel sighed; she wasn't too enthusiastic to meet her 'parents.'

* * *

Once in Lawrence, the trio booked a room at the motel, and Mel elected to stay behind, lying that she 'believed this was a personal case.' As soon as Mel was sure she was alone, she reluctantly dialed John's number.

"_Mel?_"

"We're here," she said. "Room 15."

"_Good_." the elder Winchester hung up.

Mel sat on one of the beds, fidgeting nervously with her fingerless gloves. A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Slowly, the female hunter made her way to the door, and opened it. There stood John, and behind him was a middle aged man and woman. The man had black, yet graying, hair with a receding hairline. He had smile wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, suggesting he smiled a lot. The woman was short. Like, midget-like short; she looked about 4' 6". She had bright green eyes, a kind face, and had graying blonde hair, making it look white blonde.

"Hi," Mel said, letting the three adults in, eyeing the strangers warily. She sat down on one of the beds, and the man and woman took the chairs by the table. John remained standing.

"Mel, this is Elizabeth and Josiah Smith," John introduced them.

"They do know I've got amnesia, right?" Mel mumbled, looking at the man that had been the closest thing she'd had for a father for six years. At her question, John nodded. Mel looked at the couple, studying them.

"You're right," the woman said. "She does look like Mellie." Mel grimaced at the nickname.

"I told you it would be hard to tell, Mrs. Smith," John reminded the woman gently.

"Can you tell us about yourself, Mel?" Mr. Smith asked, respecting the nickname choice.

"Well…" Mel picked at her gloves again. "I know I'm twenty-six, now. I'm…addicted to Monster energy drinks. I'm writing a book. Um…" Mel shrugged. "There really isn't that much to tell other than I can't remember a damn thing before I was found on that road side."

"What state was that again?" Mr. Smith queried.

"Michigan," she answered immediately, but the Smiths didn't look surprised. Mrs. Smith just nodded.

"Yes, we were there for a wedding. Mellie was supposed to be one of the bridesmaids, but…she never showed up. I don't think she even made it to the salon for make up."

Mel thought for a second, though none of this was ringing a bell for her. "When I finally came to my senses, I was in a hospital garb - like, _literally_ in a hospital, even."

Mrs. Smith made a face. "Odd."

Just then, Mel's cell phone rang, Cold Play's _Clocks_ playing loudly. Blushing slightly, Mel answered her phone. "Yeah?"

"_Okay, so the family that just moved in? The mom, Jenny, has been hearing scratching, like rats, in the floors. The plumbing isn't working, and so is the wiring. But get this - the daughter, Sari, claims she saw a _figure on fire," Sam said quickly.

"Whoa, whoa, slow down Sam," Mel said. "She saw a _what_?"

"_A figure on fire_," the younger Winchester repeated.

Mel's eyes widened. "You don't think - "

"_It's a possibility_."

"But all those other things, they're all signs of an…_infestation_." Translation: a malevolent spirit.

"_That might be it, too, but we don't know yet. For all we know, it could be the thing that killed our mom._"

"What're you gonna do now?"

"_We're gonna ask around town. Ask Dad's old friends what they knew - what they _could_ know. Anything going on with you?_"

Mel shook her head. "No. I'm just writing, like I always do. See ya." Mel hung up and turned to John and her maybe-parents who did not look familiar whatsoever. Making a split-second decision that totally went against her nature to be nice to people (most of the time), she said, "Look, I'm sorry if I'm being rude, but honestly don't think you're my parents."

Mrs. Smith smiled sadly. "That's okay. From the way you talked to that boy, I could tell right away that you aren't our Mellie."

"Oh, Sam and I, we're not, we're just…" Mel trailed off, quirking an eyebrow. "What do you mean, the way I talked to him?"

"Our Mellie…tends to prefer women more than men," Mrs. Smith admitted slowly, like it was some dark, embarrassing family secret.

Mel blinked, taken aback. _Okay, awkward_, she thought.

The Smiths left, as did John. John didn't say where he was going, but said he had a lead on the thing that killed Mary.

A few minutes later, Sam called again, saying he and Dean was going to a psychic and that they wanted Mel to come, too. They picked her up from the motel and drove to the psychic's, Missouri Moseley's, home, where she held her séances and stuff. Apparently, John had gone to see Missouri once, which was the reason Sam and Dean were going to see her.

"Why do you want me to come with, though?" Mel asked curiously.

"Because she might have answers about your past," Sam replied tentatively, like he was afraid of how Mel was going to react.

Mentally, Mel groaned. What was it with people and trying to find out about her past today? She was tempted to shout '_just leave the freaking subject alone, already, people!_' but held her tongue, knowing the awkward questions that would ensue.

* * *

At Missouri's, they had to wait for her to be done with a costumer before they could see her. The trio only had to wait a few minutes before a man came out of the séance/whatever room followed by a black woman who seemed to just _radiate_ kindness.

"All right there," the woman, presumably Missouri, was saying to the middle aged man. "Don't you worry 'bout a thing. Your wife is crazy about you." The man thanked her and left. Missouri turned to the trio and said, "Whew. Poor bastard. His woman is cold-bangin' the gardener."

Mel raised a questioning eyebrow. "Seriously? You _lied_ to him?"

"People don't come here for the truth. They come for good news," Missouri snapped at her. The trio just stared at her. "Well? Sam and Dean, Mel, come on already, I ain't got all day." Without waiting for a response, she left to the back room. Sam, Dean, and Mel exchanged confused looks before following her.

"Well, lemme look at ya," Missouri continued, looking at the Winchesters, and laughed joyously. "Oh, you boys grew up handsome." she pointed at Dean. "And you were one goofy-lookin' kid, too." The older Winchester glared at the older woman and Sam and Mel smirked. "Sam." she turned to the younger Winchester, and took his hand. Immediately, her face turned sympathetic. "Oh, honey…I'm sorry about your girlfriend. And your father - he's missin'?"

"How'd you know all that?" Sam asked, perplexed.

"Well, you were just thinkin' it now," the woman explained, and Sam's eyebrows disappeared underneath his bangs.

"Well, where is he? Is he okay?" Dean demanded.

Missouri sighed. "I don't know," she stated matter-of-factly.

"Don't know?" the older Winchester looked taken aback. "You're supposed to be a psychic, right?"

"Boy, you see me sawn' some bony tramp in half? You think I'm a magician? I may be able to read thoughts and sense energies in a room, but I can't just pull facts out of thing air," the black woman shot back furiously. "Sit, please." Sending Dean an amused smirk, Mel sat down on one of the armchairs. Suddenly, without warning, Missouri snapped, "Boy, you put your foot on my coffee table, I'm 'a whack you with a spoon!"

Mel couldn't help but giggle at Missouri's continued scolding at Dean.

"You think somethin's funny, girl?" the older woman snapped at her, and immediately Mel's smirk disappeared as she shook her head 'no' swiftly. "Good."

"Okay. So, our dad - when did you first meet him?" Sam asked.

Missouri went on to explain that John had went to her a few days after the fire for a reading, and that she told him the truth about monsters and demons and such. "I guess you could say…I drew back the curtains for him."

"What about the fire?" Dean inquired. "Do you know about what killed our mom?"

"A little." She explained that John had taken her to the house to see if she could sense what had killed Mary Winchester all those years ago. After Sam asked her if she knew what it was, Missouri admitted that she didn't, but knew for certain that it was evil. It took a few minutes of silence to let that information sink into the brother's brains. "Melissa…" Missouri turned to her. "You poor, poor girl…" the older woman took Mel's hand. "Oh, I'm sorry about earlier today."

Mel shrugged and shook her head, ignoring the boy's questioning looks. "It's nothing. Really."

Missouri just looked at her. "But, deep down, you're devastated. I know you know you know." Mel shrugged again. "As for those powers of yours…girl, I don't know what you are. It ain't somethin' good, though."

Mel tilted her head in confusion. "If you had to take a guess, though…"

"At how you can do what you do?" Missouri finished, and then sighed, frowning. "If I'da had to guess…Honey, I'd say you're a psychic, too."

The female hunter's eyes widened fractionally. "Say what?" A psychic? Seriously? What was this, Bizzaro Earth?

"Girl, take it or leave it," the African-American woman snapped, having read Mel's thoughts. "The only thing I can think of that explains all that _power_…" the psychic trailed off, bemused, shrugging and shaking her head. She turned back to the brothers. "So…you think somethin' is back in that house?"

"Definitely," Sam replied, nodding.

"I don't understand," she mumbled, though it seemed like mostly to herself.

"What?"

"I haven't been back inside, but I've been keepin' an eye on the place, and it's been quiet. No sudden deaths, no freak accidents. Why is it actin' up now?"

"I don't know," Sam admitted. "But Dad going missing and Jessica dying and now this house all happening at once - it just feels like something's starting."

"That's a comforting thought," Dean remarked sarcastically.

_You think?_ Mel replied mentally, shaking her head. Yes, Sam just _had_ to say something was starting. He just _had to say it_. Aloud, Mel said, "You just had to say it, Sam."

"What?" the younger Winchester asked, confused.

"You _never_ say it. _Ever_," Mel informed him seriously. "If you say it, it _will_ happen. Thanks a bunch!"

* * *

At the Winchester house, it took a little convincing, but Jenny finally allowed them to have a look around the house to try to figure out what was going on there. After Missouri had a look around using her ability to sense the thing's energy force - Mel could tell Sam and Dean were relieved that it wasn't the thing that killed their mom, but were instantly tense again when Missouri announced it was a poltergeist.

"Not it," Missouri corrected, moving to the closet in Sam's old nursery and opening it. "Them. There's more than one spirit in this place."

"What are they doing here?" Dean asked.

"They're here because of what happened to your family. You see, all those years ago, real evil came to you. It walked this house. That kind of evil leaves wounds. And sometimes, wounds get infected."

"So you're saying," Mel began, "that some person's peaceful spirit had been here while the Winchesters lived here, right?" Missouri nodded, and Mel continued. "And, the so-called 'evil' that was in this house sort of…damaged the spirit in irreparable ways - like damaging mental images that you wish there was a thing called brain bleach to erase. So, said spirit couldn't cope and became the wrathful thing it is now?" she guessed.

"Exactly. This place is a magnet for paranormal energy, attracting that poltergeist. And it's a nasty one. It won't rest until Jenny and her babies are dead."

"You said there was more than one spirit," the younger Winchester pointed out.

"There is," she confirmed, walking around the room. "I just can't quite make out the second one."

"Well one thing's for damn sure - nobody's dyin' in this house ever again," Dean said firmly. "So whatever is here, how do we stop it?"

Mel knew how to banish a poltergeist - for her, it was damn fun. Grinning like a maniac, she said, "The old fashioned way."

They were now in the kitchen making hex bags that would banish the poltergeist - those bags had to be placed inside the walls at the north, south, east, and west corners of the house on each floor. Sounds simple, yeah, but it isn't really when said malevolent spirit gets the gist of what exactly the hell it is you're up to. To Mel, that's the fun part. She doesn't know why, she just finds the thrill of beating something like that, like in a race, just like an adrenalin spike. Hell, she hated it when she got thrown around the room (very annoying), but it was just…fun. Mel really didn't know how to describe it.

"So, what is all this stuff, anyway?" Dean asked, gesturing to the hex bag ingredients spread out on the kitchen table.

"Angelica Root, Van-Van oil, crossroad dirt…a few other odds and ends," Missouri listed.

Dean asked what they were supposed to do with the bags, and Mel explained the process - probably a little too enthusiastically, but hey, she was excited.

"We'll be punchin' holes in the dry wall," Dean replied. "Jenny's gonna love that."

"She'll live," the psychic remarked slyly.

"And this'll destroy the spirits?" Sam queried.

"It should. It should purify the house completely. You three'll each take a floor. But you work fast. Once the spirits realize what you're up to, things are gonna get bad."

"What about you?" Dean asked, raising a questioning eyebrow.

"I'm gonna wait outside, that's what I'm gonna do," the woman replied.

* * *

And that's why Mel was lurking in the creepy basement, hex bag in one hand, flashlight in the other, where the lights didn't work. She wasn't afraid of the dark, really, she just felt…out of place in it. The dark bugged her, is all. Rolling her eyes at the unimportant thoughts going around in her head, Mel looked around for a suitable place to put the hex bag in her hand. The basement, technically, was the easiest room (she'd fought for the kitchen, because there were _knives_ to fight off), but she'd just have to get over it. Heck, Mel didn't even have to hack a hole in the wall. She just tossed it into a corner where there was a brick missing, and her work here was done.

That is, until a dresser came at her full-force, pinning her to the wall from the waste down. "Son of a bitch," Mel gritted out, trying to push the dresser away with no such luck. Mel hated situations like that - it always happened in horror movies, so why did the ghosts have to be so damn cliché?

Suddenly, a bright, white light glowed form the corner of the room and spread outward, like it was pushing - no, _forcing_ - something outside the house. The pressure from the dresser diminished, and Mel was able to free herself. She grabbed the flashlight, which she'd dropped when the dresser of doom flown at her, and jogged upstairs.

The kitchen looked like it had been used as a makeshift circus act - the kitchen table was on it's side with all of the knives imbedded in it, and a single knife was stuck in one of the cupboard doors. The refrigerator was wide open, its contents spilled and spread out on the floor in front of it like a river delta.

A few moments later, Dean came downstairs with an out-of-breath looking Sam in tow.

"What happened to you?" Mel asked, addressing the younger Winchester.

Dean answered for Sam, which clearly meant Sam _was_ struggling to breathe. "He, uh, got strangled by a lamp cord."

Mel winced. "Ouch."

Dean took a look around the kitchen. "And you _wanted_ to cover this room?" he asked her, incredulous.

Mel rolled her eyes. "Yeah. I don't know how to explain it, it's just fun avoiding shit that flies at you."

Missouri entered the house, confirming that both spirits were, in fact, gone. But something didn't seem right to Mel - and apparently Sam agreed with her.

"You sure this is over?" he asked.

"I'm sure," Missouri answered. "Why? Why do you ask?"

"Never mind." Sam sighed. "It's nothing', I guess."

At that great and cheery moment, Jenny and her kids were back home.

"Hello? We're home," she called out, coming into the kitchen. As if not believing the sight in front of her (which wouldn't be that too big of a surprise, really), she asked, "What happened?"

"Hi, sorry," Sam replied. "Um, we'll pay for all of this."

The older Winchester looked confused, but before he could say anything, Missouri spoke up. "Don't you worry. Dean's gonna clean this up." Dean made no move to do so. "Well, what are you waiting for, boy? Get the mop." As he began walking away, the psychic added, "And don't cuss at me!"

The older Winchester walked away, grumbling to himself under his breath.

* * *

Later that night - because of Mel's and Sam's intuition - Sam, Dean, and Mel were sitting outside the house waiting for something to happen. Mel was so bored she'd even brought a _fashion magazine_, of all things. Mel was no girly-girl, that was for certain.

"All right, so, tell me again, what are we still doin' here?" Dean demanded for what seemed like the bazilionth time.

"I don't know. I just…Mel and I seem agree that something's not right," his younger brother admitted for what seemed the bazilionth and one time.

"Why? Missouri did her whole Zelda Rubenstein thing, the house should be clean, it should be over."

"Yeah, well, tell that to a certain Jenny screaming for help in the upstairs window," Mel interrupted, pointing at the house.

"Son of a bitch," Dean muttered, launching himself out of the car. "Mel, stay here!"

Mel, who had been halfway out of the car, yelled at him, "I'm not an amateur, you know!" but he didn't listen. "What am I, a Precious Moments doll?!" seriously, _every freaking time_ there was a big fight, she always got the '_stay here!_' line. Grumbling, swearing to herself she wasn't gonna let this happen next time, she stood out in the lawn and waited anxiously. After two minutes which seemed more like two hours, Dean and Jenny came running out into the lawn, Sari and Ritchie following out a minute later.

Jenny picked up her son, while Dean knelt down next to Sari, demanding, "Sari, where's Sam?"

Sari, crying, explained, "He's inside. Something's got him."

Dean and Mel both looked up, panic etched into their faces, and watched as the front door slammed shut on its own.

In an instant, Dean was at the trunk of the Impala, grabbing an ax and his double barrel shotgun. Mel made a move to help, but was yet again told to stay there. Shooting her ultimate Bitch Glare at the older Winchester's back, she watched as he tried to kick open the door, but, failing to do so, resorted to hacking the supernaturally sealed door down piece by piece. Once he'd created a hole large enough for him to crawl through, Dean disappeared into the house.

The waiting was tense, but not two minutes (seemed like hours) later, Sam and Dean emerged from the house, thankfully unharmed. As they got closer, Mel noticed that they had unshed tears in their eyes.

"What happened?" she demanded, concerned.

"Nothing," Sam answered, trying and failing to subtly wipe the moisture away from his eyes. Mel didn't grill for details, knowing how it felt to keep things to yourself.

* * *

The next morning, after Jenny and her family had stayed at the motel for the night in case the poltergeist returned, Missouri had a quick look around the house and determined there was no longer any type of supernatural force in the Winchester house. While Sam and Dean were saying goodbye to Missouri, Mel waited for them patiently in the Impala. All morning there had been this pressure behind her eyes, throbbing like a detached heart-beat (not literally, that would be just plain freaky).

By the time everyone was ready to go, her nerves were spiking with pain, making her want to snap at everyone to _shut the hell up!_

"So, Mel, since we've been taking charge of most of the cases," Dean started, but was cut of by said female hunter.

"No," she moaned, pressing the heels of her hands over her eyes. "Shut up."

"Mel? You alright?" she heard Sam ask.

"No," she repeated truthfully, faintly able to hear whispering. "No…make it stop…"

"Mel? Calm down, Mel, make _what_ stop?" the younger Winchester asked frantically.

"Make it stop…" she repeated as the whispering grew steadily louder, able to make out indecipherable words. The ones that stood out the most were '_Come home_…' over and over again. She rocked back and forth like a child. "No…"

"Mel? Mel!"

But Mel couldn't even tell who was speaking to her any more. As the voices grew increasingly loud, everything around her faded away.

She was trapped in a world of darkness and voices.


	6. John's Plan

**Hello! Sorry it took so long - this is a free form chapter (meaning, it doesn't follow an episode), so I had to do some major research on what happened when and all that crap. I also had to research Azazel's personality and what the omens are for when he is in an area, and where John was when...it was hectic, that's all I have to say. Oh, and please review; makes me glad to know what people think of this :)**

**Disclaimer: I do not own _Supernatural_  
**

* * *

It could have been seconds, minutes, hours, days…hell, it could have been years, for all Mel knew. Even though she was unconscious, the throbbing headache behind her eyes continued to pound, never letting up. The voices, the whispering, never let up either. Eventually, though, it was more than just incoherent speech.

The sensation of floating and having a hammer bash against the inside of her skull never left, but at one point Mel felt herself walking. Just walking. A scene materialized around her - a walking path park that strangely resembled Central Park - but it was empty. She was dressed in her usual attire: dark jeans, a black T-shirt, combat boots, and fingerless gloves. If it weren't for the grinding in her head and the constant mumbling, Mel would think the whole thing was real.

All the while, Mel continued walking down the asphalt path as if on autopilot, looking around at the scenery. Time did not seem to matter, so Mel wasn't sure how long it was before she spotted at elderly man sitting on a bench and tossing birdseed on the ground to a group of city pigeons.

"Sir!" Mel called out instinctively, though the man didn't react. "Sir, can you hear me?"

It was only until the female hunter was three feet away from the man before he finally responded. "I hear you." He looked up. "Though I don't know who _you_ are."

"Mel," she replied.

"Mel…name sounds familiar…" the man trailed off. "Ah, well. No point in remembering something that I'm probably not going to need to know, anyhow."

Mel tilted her head, confused. "What to you mean?"

The man stared at her, perplexed. "You don't know? Why, this is the damn Veil."

"The damn what?" Mel deadpanned.

He sighed. "Think of it as an afterlife for ghosts."

"Ghosts?" Mel squeaked. "As in, real live, dead ghosts? Spirits? 'I see dead people' ghosts?"

The man pursed his lips. "Those are all ways of putting it, but yes. Ghosts."

Mel took a minute (or what could have been a split second, for all she knew) to let that new information sink in. The Veil. She had heard Bobby Singer, and old friend of the Winchester family, mention something about it once. From what she remembered, the Veil was where the spirits that were still grounded to earth lived in - it was a pocket dimension, to put it simply - it was where all the malevolent spirits went. Nevertheless, the only way to be in the Veil was to either a) be a Reaper, or b) be dead. And since Mel definitely was not a Reaper (at least, she hoped so), that could only mean… "Am I dead?" she asked tentatively.

The man looked at her, squinting hard as if he had bad eyesight and needed glasses. "No…no, you ain't dead. Just…comatose, I think. Naw, you're just visiting us dead people."

Mel raised a questioning eyebrow. "Visiting?"

He nodded. "That's right, girly." Mel glowered at being called 'girly' but held her tongue. "We don't get to many _living_ visitors; it's nice when someone stops by for a chat."

"So, what, am I psychic?" she asked sarcastically.

"I'd say so, yes," he answered. "One with more…abilities than most, I'd say. You'd give this one psychic I knew, Pamela Barnes, a run for her money."

"But…but that doesn't make sense," Mel stuttered. "I-I can't be a psychic. I don't have 'premonitions.'" She raised her hands up using air quotes. "And don't you think my memory would have snapped back into place by now?"

He smiled sadly. "Sometimes - brain damage - it's irreparable. Me, of all people, would know!" he chuckled humorlessly. "Girly, I'm just some random spirit. You could have run into any one of us."

Mel narrowed her eyes. "Why are you even talking to me?"

"Because you're a damn psychic, of course!" he exclaimed. "They're the only people us 'dead-folk' really be nice to."

Mel scoffed. "Yeah? Tell that to the hundreds of badass ghosts I'd had to gank."

The man ignored her, though she could have sworn there was a hint of a grin on his face. "I'm sure your memory will return in time, Mel. Some people - they get flashbacks. Others have to see an object, or a person, for it to all come rushing back." He rolled his eyes. "Before I died, I was in a car accident - dirty bastards; even today, damn teenagers are still reckless - hit my head on the steering wheel and _poof!_ when I come to, can't remember a damn thing about myself. Doctors told me I only had a few hours left to live because of a brain bleed, shortly after that. Bastards." the man turned to looked her in the eyes for the first time - they were a startling bright green, almost emerald. She couldn't put her finger on it, but Mel could've sworn she'd seen those eyes before. "The first person I saw after I died was my wife - she'd died a few before. Right away, when I saw her, I knew who I was and everything."

For once, Mel did not have a reply. "Why are you telling me this?"

The man shrugged. "'Cause I'm being nice, you got a problem with that? There _are_ a few of us who don't go full on Vader, sweetheart."

"But…d'you know what's up with the voices in my head?" Mel asked with a skeptic tone. "What's with the 'come home' deal?"

"People are talking to you," he answered. "As for the 'come home' thing, that is something you have to figure out on your own."

"What? Why?"

"_Destiny_," the man grunted out.

Suddenly, as if the whole thing were a mirage, the edges of Mel's vision began to fade. "'Destiny'? You're really laying that whole 'destiny' crap on me?"

"Indeed I am, sweetheart." he gave her a wink.

As more 'time' passed, the scene faded away faster and faster. "Wait!" Mel shouted as the man seemed to get farther and farther away from her. "You didn't even tell me your name!"

However, it was too late; the pressure in her head decreased instantly, the whispering coming down to a mute. Mel sat straight up in bed, panting and shivering as if she'd just had a bucket of ice-cold water dumped on her. But no, that wasn't the initial shock of the moment. The initial shock of the moment was seeing John Winchester sitting uncomfortably in a wooden chair, that probably belonged to the motel room that Mel just realized she was in, next to her bed, half asleep. Well, he _had_ been half-asleep.

Upon Mel's sudden awakening, John snapped instantly to full alert mode and reaching for his gun instinctively.

Mel had to blink the sleep from her eyes for a few long seconds, but finally she was able to get out, "What the hell are you doing here? Why am _I_ doing here?"

"You're here so I can keep an eye on you, that's why you're here," the eldest Winchester retorted, squirming slightly in his chair to find a more comfortable position.

"No, I mean, _why_ are you here? Aren't you focused on finding that…jelly-belly - "

"Yellow-eyed."

"Whatever. The demon that killed Mary?"

John sighed. "Why don't you lay back down, and I'll explain."

Reluctantly, Mel leaned back against the pillows, and then crossed her arms in silent demand that he explain himself.

"A few days before the anniversary of _that night_, when I was working the case in Jericho…"

* * *

_6 months ago…_

John examined the list of victims, trying to find a connection between them. The eldest Winchester had been in Jericho for a few days, already, and so far all he could figure was that I was a damn ghost was ganking men on Centennial Highway. Thing is, there was _no damn connection_; spirits always - _always_ - killed those with some kind of connection. Whether it be something as simple as going to the same coffee shop every day, something had to relate between the people.

And yet there was _nothing_.

Sighing, John ran a hand over his face - he had just drove along Centennial Highway, and seen the son of a bitch for himself: a woman with long brown curly hair, wearing a white floor length dress, and sad eyes. She'd just stood on the side of the road, watching him, before disappearing. She hadn't killed him, so he obviously wasn't on her hit list.

And that was when John realized - the answer was so obvious! All the victims were various ages, different races, no relations whatsoever, but that didn't matter to Constance Welch. That article John had found a while back said that Constance had committed suicide after her kids had drowned in the tub. And not only that, but her spirit had been dressed in white. Constance Welch had become a Woman in White.

But before John could do anything about it, he heard some news report on the TV, where the sound had been playing as quiet background noise.

'_And in other news tonight, a fire broke out around midnight last night in Sacramento_,' the reporter said.'_Officials say that the cause of the fire was loose wiring in the ceiling and walls. Mr. Dawson and his six month old son were able to escape before rescue crews arrived, however Mrs. Dawson was not able to make it out_…'

A fire. That started on the ceiling. A six month old baby. The mother didn't survive. All signs that it could very well be the thing that killed Mary, and finally, John had a lead.

Not hesitating in the slightest, John grabbed a book that had lore on Women in White, he turned to the page and tore the picture out. He grabbed a sharpie and quickly scribbled the name of the monster across the top of the picture before tacking it to the wall next to his other notes. The next thing he did, very reluctantly, was snatch his journal up, and flip to one of the pages in the back. There had been signs of something killing people out of there - he'd put Mel and Dean on the job to keep them busy and away from him while he tracked down what killed his wife - he just quickly wrote down the coordinates of Black Water Ridge, Colorado on the page underneath Mel and Dean's names. He wasn't taking anything but his credit cards, cash, and IDs with - he dropped the wallet on the bed.

On the road on the way out of Jericho, he called Dean, leaving a message on the voicemail: "Dean…something big is starting to happen…I need to try and figure out what's going on. It may be the thing the killed your mother. Be careful Dean. We're all in danger." he hung up, planning on ditching the phone later, and hoping to God his son and Mel would stay out of danger as best as they could.

* * *

Two weeks later, John was finally able to summon the thing in an abandoned convent in Illchester, Maryland, and he is not surprised to discover it is a demon. This demon is different, however. The yellow eyes were the big giveaway. It introduced itself as Azazel. That was when John learned the truth about Sam, and the demon's plan about his so-called 'psychic children.'

* * *

A month after summoning the demon, it struck again. In northern Montana, another mother died while the exactly six month old child and it's father survived. A week after that, the demon killed again in Texas. In the month of February, two more fires caused by the demon broke out, in Pennsylvania and Minnesota. Over the next four months, the demon destroyed a total of six families.

* * *

In Elko, Nevada, while John was just finishing his investigation of another fire, which he had confirmed been the fault of the yellow-eyed demon, he found a family that had a missing daughter that resembled Melissa so much, there was almost no difference from Melissa and the pictures of the family - in the pictures, Melissa's look-a-like had straight and tame hair, though Mel's hair was curly and wild.

At least John had found his excuse to find a safe place for Mel; things were getting too dangerous. The eldest Winchester knew he was being constantly watched by demons.

* * *

After the fiasco with Mel, John stayed with Missouri, the only safe place to stay while he worked things out.

* * *

_Present Day_…

"…and after you and the boys finished with that poltergeist, from what I heard from Missouri, you had some sort of fit - headaches and spasms. You seemed to have been in some sort of trance and wouldn't come out of it, so they'd rushed you to the hospital from which I'd busted you out of," John finished explaining to Mel, who's expression had gotten steadily darker while learning about the yellow-eyed demon. "You've been out for about fourteen hours."

"And Sam and Dean?" Mel inquired, raising a questioning eyebrow.

"Left for a job in Illinois - Missouri'd told them she'd look after you."

Mel contemplated this, noticing for the first time she was still in the hospital scrubs. "Why bust me out?"

John sighed. "I need some help."

"And?"

"And you're the only one who can give it."

"Help with what?"

"Hunting down the yellow-eyed demon," he said seriously.

"Why me? Why not Sam or Dean?"

"Sam and Dean need to remain oblivious until the time is right." John gave her a pointed glare.

"Fine! I'll help you," Mel exclaimed reluctantly. "So, what's this demon been up to?"

* * *

_5 months ago…_

"John Winchester," the yellow-eyed thing, obviously a demon, drawled. "You finally caught me red-handed."

"Who are you?" John demanded, his gun pointed at the demon.

"I'm the one who killed your darling Mary, John," it said, chuckling. "And I'm the one who's going to kill you."

John hesitated, before lowering his gun, saying, "I'm not here to fight. I'm here to talk."

"Talk? John, we _are_ talking."

"I wanna know why you did it," John stated, frustrated. He clenched his teeth. "I wanna know why you killed Mary."

"She interrupted me. I told her: as long as you let me by, I won't do you any harm."

_Told her?_ thought John. If he had talked to Mary, then that meant.

"Oh, John, did she forget to tell you?" the demon asking, mockingly, at seeing the calculating look on the elder Winchester's face. John's narrowed at the demon's next words. "Miss Mary and I made a deal - revive you and, in return, I would pop in, take a visit in ten years time. Oh, no, no, no, I'm not going to tell you _why_ she made the deal, John. That would only spoil it. What I _will_ tell you what I did during my little reunion: I gave little Sammy a drink."

"A drink of _what_?" John growled.

"Oh, nothing much - just a teeny bit of my blood." John, stunned, said nothing as the demon continued speaking. "You see, Sammy's special. Real special…he and a whole group of kids are chosen by me. They're what I call my Special Children."

John glared at the demon. "What did you do to my son?" he demanded loudly.

"There's no need to get hostile, John," it chastised. "My blood is perfectly harmless - to the drinker, anyway." it chucked, like it was thinking of an inside joke. "What the blood does is trigger a gene they never knew they had - gives them special…_abilities_. Without training, their abilities are completely harmless - they get visions, mostly, or something better. After training, well…let's just say things could get ugly."

"You're planning something," John stated.

"_Ding ding ding!_ We have a winner, come on down to claim your prize," the demon exclaimed sarcastically. "You're damn right I have a plan - one that's taken over thirty years to complete. But that's not important. I do have to be going, in any case. I dearly hope we meet again, John."

And before John could do anything, the demon disappeared leaving behind the stench of sulfur.

* * *

_Present Day_…

Mel sat there, shocked. "What the hell?" Sure, she could have said 'Poor Sam…' or 'Wow, and I thought _my_ life was bad' but 'What the hell?' was the only thing she could think to say.

"And so I need your help finding it again," John repeated. "You're the only one who can identify a demon by just looking at it."

Mel nodded. "All right. So, how do we find out where it's gonna be?"

"Well, there are plenty of signs - sudden weather changes is one of 'em, probably the most obvious. Most of the time, anything that runs on electricity or a battery goes haywire whenever he's around," John revealed. "Another obvious one is house fires that include a father and a six month old baby surviving."

Mel thought for a second. "So, we gotta find places with whacko weather fluctuations and six month old house fire survivors," she summarized. "Dear God, I hope you know where to start looking."

John nodded, grabbing a folder from the nightstand. "There have been weather changes on the west coast - Sacramento."

"Sounds good to me." Mel shrugged, then looked around the room. "Hey, where's my stuff?"

After Mel had changed out of the hospital scrubs and into something normal, she and John grabbed their stuff and took off to California.

But the trip to Sacramento from Lawrence was long. Really long. And it definitely wasn't fun when you didn't have a back seat to lounge in. Instead, Mel had to ride shotgun in John's sad old pickup truck. Luckily, Mel had her laptop - and her iPod. So, during the excruciatingly long road trip, Mel listened to music and typed like hell. Mainly because she was bored, but dimly she noticed the constant tapping of the keyboard and Mel bobbing her head to the music annoyed the shit out of John - in a weird way, it was kinda funny.

Mel was just finishing the chapters it took to write of when she, Sam and Dean were hunting the Wendigo that had taken Haley's brother when John, irritated, slammed the computer closed. She was able to pull her fingers away just in time before they could have been rudely smashed off.

"Hey, I'm using that!" she complained, ripping her ear buds out.

John just grunted irritably.

"Geez, _somebody's_ pissy," the female hunter grumbled, placing the headphones back in her ears and opening the laptop. "Makes me wonder what _my_ dad would be like."

* * *

Unknowingly to the pair, a follower of the yellow-eyed demon was following them closely, waiting for the right moment to strike.


	7. Memories

**Hey, all! Soooooo sorry for not updating sooner (stupid freaking writer's block). This chapter was also a weird one for me to write. It consisted of using 'she' and 'her' a lot. _That_ was frustrating. Anywho, on to the reading. And tell me what you think, maybe? :)**_  
_

**Disclaimer: I, DietCokeIsMyLife, do not own _Supernatural_  
**

* * *

_6 years ago…_

Her feet hurt. Her head hurt. The items that her feet were in had gotten incredibly dirty a long time ago. What were they called? Foot covers? Whatever they were called, they did nothing to protect her feet from the sharp small rocks next to the odd black trail. It was curious why there would be something like that there; a black, seemingly endless mass with a parallel yellow line streaked down the middle. What was the purpose of it? Why was it there?

Sighing in mild frustration, she sat down on the tiny rocks, wincing at the uncomfortable feeling it gave her butt. She picked idly at the odd fabric that covered her from her waist to her ankles. Its color was a light blue and the fabric had a soft feeling to it, but it was very baggy. The covering over her shoulders and torso was almost yet not the same: white and plain, not really providing much comfort against the occasional droplets of rain. There had been something on her wrist, before. It had had writing on it, but she had not bothered to interpret it; as of now, the strange band was discarded in a small creek, probably destroyed by now.

The wristband had most likely had had some significance in the clean building. Others that had worn garments like hers had donned the item.

In the clean building, she had come to on a cushiony surface, and confused as to why hard strings connected her to boxes that made strange pinging - nah, _beeping_ - noises. There had been something underneath her nose and something incredibly sharp stuck in her right hand. Someone, not far away, was sleeping on a white chair, her head bobbing occasionally every so often. The girl was young, with dark brown hair and pale skin. In the girl's ears, there were strange objects connected to the same kind of hard strings attaching them to a thin small box on the girl's lap; the box was pink and flashy, and she didn't understand why someone would even have something like that.

Turning her attention back to the various items attached to her skin, she yanked the sharp thing out of her hand quickly - _like a band aid_, her brain provided, though she had no idea what a 'band aid' even was.

Immediately, red blood oozed out of the puncture in the skin, but she didn't pay any mind to it. The girl in the chair shifted in her sleep, but did not wake. Good. Next thing was to remove the hard strings. The strings were attached to her skin by some sort of substance that had once been sticky - _glue_, said the voice in her head. Ignoring it, she ripped the strings off one by one, and the results were immediate; the boxes shrieked and beeped urgently, and she decided now might be the time to get out of this strange place.

Throwing back the covers, she hopped off the…_thing_ (_bed_, her brain insisted)she was on and hastily exited the room. She caught a small glimpse of writing on a sheet of paper before leaving - it read 'STOMACH CANCER - TERMINAL.'

* * *

_Present Day_…

_Stomach cancer_, Mel thought, shaking her head at the memory. _How in the _hell_ did I survive freaking stomach cancer?_

Now that Mel knew about her 'psychic' abilities, it made a little more sense: freaky powers somehow suppressing or getting rid of the cancer. Made sense why her freaking foot was so damn frigging healthy even though it should have taken a few weeks longer to heal. But why wasn't she getting her memory back?

_It's probably only a matter of time_, Mel told herself as she watched a jackrabbit hop quickly out of site behind a cactus, quickly followed by three smaller ones. A mother and its babies. Mel turned her head back to her computer and whacked the screen lightly as it was still frozen ("Dammit, _work_ you stupid piece of shit!") and let out a string of curse words as the top part flipped back loosely, making the screen blank out.

Mel sighed in frustration. "I'm gonna need a new computer if this thing keeps acting the way it does."

John gave her a look. "You can get one _after_ we kill the demon."

Mel shot him a glare of her own, her Bitch Glare. "Excuse me? Did I _look_ I was asking you?"

"We have to stay focused on the hunt, Mel," John stated, ignoring her outburst.

Rolling her eyes, she said, "Am I your daughter? No! Do I depend on you for money? No! Am I perfectly capable of jumping out of this car with my stuff, hitchhiking away, and never seeing you again? Yes!"

"Are you threatening me?"

"To get the hell outta Dodge - away from you and your little 'I'm want you to help find the demon' crusade? You bet I am!" Mel shouted. "I did not ask you to drop everything and get me a shiny new and expensive computer; I just _commented_ that this piece of crap - " Mel whacked the screen of the piece of crap in question " - will need replacing in the maybe-near future!" When John ignored her, she muttered, "Yep, definitely pissy."

It made Mel wonder why she even got in the car in the first place, all those years ago.

* * *

_6 months ago…_

It was a really long time as she sat there. There was nothing to do but trace meaningless lines and squiggles in the rock dust while she sat next to the black path. It only made sense to do so.

What was one's purpose? What were people supposed to do? Did Fate just decide what course of action you were supposed to take, and whom you met?

Apparently it did, because she just noticed the black box thing on wheels approaching. It pulled over in front of her, and quickly she stood up and backed away. One of the see-through panels (_Glass_) lowered down revealing a man - not to old, not too young. He had dark hair, stubble, and dark calculating eyes. He looked…scary.

"You need a ride?" he asked. She did not trust him. Why would she? Some strange man who came from nowhere in a big black box-thing on wheels. (_Kinda like Doctor Who_, her mind said, but she didn't even know what that meant).

"W…What?" she asked, not quite sure at what the man meant.

The man in question rolled his eyes. "Do you need to go somewhere?"

Go somewhere? Where? Now that she thought about it, she didn't even know where she was. "I don't know. I don't know anything."

He sighed. "Well, why don't you start with your name?"

Her name? Yeah, that was a good question. "I don't know that either."

The man appeared to be lost in thought, now. As if he could not decide whether to just leave her or be a Good Samaritan and help her. "Damn it," he muttered. "All right. Hop in."

Tentatively, she grabbed the handle of what appeared to be the door and pried the door in question open. Once seated, she closed the door and looked over at the man. "And what's _your_ name?" she asked after a second.

"John," he answered. "John Winchester."

The ride to wherever John Winchester was taking her had been quiet and very long - they arrived at a one level building with many doors. A sign not too far away read SWEET DREAMS MOTEL. It wasn't a particularly well built building, but it was very…modern?…looking.

"Why're we here?" she could not help but ask.

"My sons and I've got a room here," John explained, turning the car off. "We'll help you figure out where you're from."

"What are you sons' names?" she inquired curiously.

"Dean - he's 20, the oldest - and Sam, who's 16," he told her.

After entering the through one of the doors (it had a '5' symbol on it), John introduced her to Sam and Dean.

Dean was a little taller than she was, with spiky dirty blonde hair and emerald green eyes. Sam, who seemed to be in the middle of a major growth spurt, had long-ish brown hair and brown eyes.

However, she didn't really pay attention to them. Out of the corner of her eye, she had noticed a piece of paper (_yes, that's what the material is called_) with a symbol on it. The symbol wasn't strange, no, what was strange was that she _knew what it meant_.

"Why do you have the design for a devil's trap copied down?" she questioned curiously, the name just flowing from her mouth automatically, and pointed at the symbol in question.

Sam whipped his head around to see what she was pointing at, and then looked back to her. "How did you know that?"

Baffled at her own sudden knowledge, she quickly lowered her arm and stuttered out "I don't…I don't know."

Behind her, John Winchester sighed. "Dean - Sam this is…Well, she doesn't know who she is."

Dean gave his father an affronted look. "And you just gave a complete stranger who doesn't 'know who she is' a free ride over here? What are you, crazy?"

She furrowed her brow, confused. Why would Dean be angry that his father had helped her? It seemed a little - no, _very_ - strange someone would react that way.

"She's telling the truth, Dean," John snapped. "We've dealt with a few amnesiacs before - you and I both know the signs."

"That - " Dean pointed at the devil trap symbol " - was not a sign of amnesia."

"Actually," Sam interjected, "some, if not most, amnesiacs can identify things and just instantly know what it means - just like that. It doesn't trigger memories, sometimes, but it does happen."

"Dude, keep the Geek to a minimum for now," Dean replied, sounding annoyed.

All the while, she just stood to the sidelines as she watched the family bicker. "Should I leave?" she spoke timidly.

"No!" everyone shouted at once, making her flinch. "No," John Winchester repeated. To his sons, he said, "We'll talk about this later."

"Yes, sir," they replied in synchronization.

After asking her a few questions - mostly questions like 'what do you last remember?' and 'did you see any names - of buildings, people?' - John Winchester 'jumped' onto what he called a laptop computer and went to a 'site' that allowed people to see other people that were missing.

John typed in her description as she sat in a chair next to him, eagerly looking at the screen. It was all surreal to her, really. After she'd called him 'John Winchester' twice, the eldest Winchester had told her it was 'just John.'

"What did you say was on the clipboard?"

"It said something along the lines of 'terminal stomach cancer,'" she repeated. After she had said that for the first time, earlier, all three men had looked at her as if she'd grown another head.

"Right…" the older man murmured. A single name popped up on the screen after John entered in the information. "Well…a family wrote out a missing persons report for an Andrea Bernard, last seen in her hospital room. That name ring any bells to you?" he asked, looking over at her.

She shook her head 'no.' "Is that the only person of my gender missing?" she queried.

"In Detroit? 'Fraid so. And Andrea Bernard _did_ go missing from a hospital room, same as you."

She shrugged. "How often do patients escape?"

"Not very often." John sighed. "Look, there's a ninety-nine point nine percent chance this Andrea Bernard is you. I say we go down to the station and find out."

"And if she's not? What if it all goes to waste? No."

John raised his eyebrows and gave her an incredulous look. If she hadn't known any better, she would have said John wasn't used to his orders being disobeyed. "_No?_ Those people might be your family, why the hell not find out?"

She shrugged. "Because I'm more curious to find out how I knew that that symbol is a devil's trap. Plus, I would like to save them the trouble."

John sighed, frustrated. "We can't just let you stay with us."

She frowned. "Why not?"

"Don't the missing person signs on the wall freak you out just a bit?" Dean asked.

Still frowning, she looked around the room and saw that there were indeed posters and signs on one wall that of a number of missing people. Shaking her head, she answered, "No, not really."

"That's it?" the younger man question. "'No, not really?'"

She shrugged. "It doesn't bother me, but it does make me wonder why they are there."

"We, uh, we're kinda like the police," Dean said. "We go after things that kill people, sometimes there are missing people, and we go after whatever killed them."

"Don't you mean 'who'?" she asked.

"Yeah, we go after _people_ who kill other people. That's what I meant." She wasn't convinced, but let it be for now.

Biting her lip, she made a split-second decision. "I want to go with you guys." All three men started talking all at once in a panic, but she interrupted them. "I know it seems cruel and a little…odd not to try to look for my family or friends, but I just feel like I don't belong with them. I'd rather go you - saving people, going after other people."

Dean was the first to break the long silence that ensued. "Yeah. You can stay."

"Dean!" Sam and John shouted.

"What?" the young man retorted. "She's got nowhere else to go anyway, dad," he added.

John rolled his eyes. "Fine. But son…"

"Yes sir?"

"On your head be it if all goes to hell."

"Yes sir!" Dean replied, grinning slightly.

* * *

_Present Day_…

Picking out her name had been mildly amusing. John had shown her a popular baby names website; on the left side of the screen had been the boy names highlighted in blue, and the girl names highlighted in pink. Mel, however, hadn't really gotten the concept of which names went with which gender and had thought the boy names were girl names ("I like this name," she said, pointing at one of the blue names. "Uh, I don't think the name 'Micah' is for girls," Dean told her awkwardly. "Besides, those are the names for guys. Pick one from the other names."). In the end, she'd chosen Melissa, because it sounded closest to Micah. Her last name they had had to look up as well, because she'd thought it was rude to go around with the name 'Winchester' when Mel and the Winchesters weren't even related.

On a most common last names website, Mel had picked the one at the top of the list - Smith. Dean and Sam had insisted she pick a middle name, also, because 'everyone had one.' And so, at going to yet another popular names website, the middle name 'Jo' was chosen.

Melissa Jo Smith. Has a nice ring to it.

* * *

They reached Sacramento a few days later, on April 6th. They booked a motel room - technically, it was rooms, considering it was a two room, er, room - and stayed up all night making sure the omens were up to date. Luckily, they were.

By the next morning, the 7th, Mel and John had the demon's location narrowed down to a one-mile radius. The building in the middle of said one-mile radius was a bus station, which was weird.

Then again, all of the buildings in the radius were as equally unimportant - a construction site and a couple apartment buildings - so Mel assumed that was the initial plan; stay hidden…_well_ hidden.

Since that was their only lead, Mel and John decided to do what only made sense: search the whole damn area. They went on foot, which, in Mel's opinion, was not the best idea they'd come up with all day. Her foot hurt like a bitch.

"Well, one block down…five or six to go?" Mel whined as she walked out of the bus station, which just starting its rush hour shift. "How do we even know it'll stay in one place?"

"It won't," was the answer she got. "We'll just have to check again, later."

Mel rolled her eyes. "Wow, that makes this job seem _so_ much easier."

John glared at her.

Mel snorted with disgust. "_What_ is with you lately? You are, like, more on edge than you have ever been, and you're so pissy! You're, like, pissed off at everything I say and/or do, and let me tell you, it is getting freaking annoying. So please, tell me, what the hell is going on?"

He sighed, still glaring. "I'm worried, that's all." He paused. "Worried about Sam - how quickly his abilities are developing. About Dean. And about you."

"Me." Mel stopped walking, frowning.

"You've always been like a daughter to me," John clarified. Mel resumed her painfully sore gait and continued to follow him. "But…the demon had said it had plans for you."

"Plans?"

"It hadn't been specific."

Mel nodded and followed him in silence.

After an estimated number of hours later, when it was well after 6:00 p.m., Mel was ready give up. They had been through each building twice, and there had been no sign of the yellow-eyed demon. Defeated for the night, they ate at a Biggerson's. John ordered a regular burger and Mel ordered the double bacon cheeseburger (what could she say? It was a guilty pleasure).

"Look," Mel said through a mouthful of lettuce and beef, "I can tell already I'm slowin' you down." She swallowed. "What with my damn foot and all, y'know? Moreover, I cannot sense all demons. You remember that one down in Florida, right? Where I couldn't find jack squat and we thought in was the waitress when it actually was the manager that was possessed? And so that got me thinking that this is just one of those times where I won't be any help."

John looked at her and blinked, frowning. "When did you have time to think of all that?"

"While we were walking up those stairs in that one apartment building where none of the elevators were working," she answered nonchalantly, taking another bite. "Trust me - twenty floors of stairs give you _plenty_ of thinking time."

There was a long silence and then John said, "Well, if you wanna go back to Sam and Dean, go right ahead. I'm not your father; you're free to make your own choices."

Mel gave a small smile. "Thank you, John. Thank you."


	8. Scarecrow

**A/N: Hi, I'm alive!...And so, so sorry. I'd planned on updating within the next week, but...obviously that didn't happen. First, it was writer's block, then it was laziness, then it was 'no i don't wanna write it cuz everyone hates it' and, well...yeah. I'm so, so sorry, again. I've got a fever of, like, 101.9 F, or something, which means I'll probably be home sick tomorrow, which will give me time to work on the next chapter (writing this one has sort of given me inspiration). Oh, and this chapter is half in Dean's POV, so review and let me know how I wrote him, if you want? (constructive critisism is welcome!) :)**

* * *

The very next day, Mel packed her things. She was going back to help the Winchester brothers, because that's where she felt she belonged, and she did not care how gay that sounded in her head.

"So, Indiana?" she asked John as she coiled up her laptop charger.

"Yep. Burkittsville," John answered. "Small, but easy to find."

Now all that was left was to call Sam and Dean.

* * *

Sam was the one who answered the phone on the fourth ring.

"_Hello?_" You could just _hear_ that Sam had been woken up.

"Sam, is that you?" John asked, emotion in his voice.

"_Dad. Are you hurt?_"

"I'm fine."

"_We've been looking for you everywhere - _"

"He knows that, Sam," Mel, who had been listening in with a good ear just outside the open phone booth doors, interrupted after she took the phone away from John.

"…Mel_?_"

"Heya, Sam," Mel replied in a monotone, mentally preparing herself for the onslaught of accusations.

"_Hand the phone back to him_."

Mel frowned. Yeah, _not_ the expected reaction, obviously. "Sam -"

"_Give it back to him_."

Grudgingly, Mel sighed "Fine. Whatever" and handed the payphone back to John.

"_Dad, where the hell have you been?_" Sam bombarded almost instantly. "_What if you'd been hurt, or - _"

"Sammy, I'm all right. What about you and Dean?"

"_We're fine. Dad, where are you - and Mel?_"

"Sorry, kiddo, I can't tell you that."

"_What? Why not?_"

"Look, I know this is hard for you to understand. You're just gonna have to trust me on this."

"_You're after it, aren't you? The thing that killed Mom._"

"Yeah. It's a demon, Sam."

"_A demon? You know for sure?_"

"I do." John nodded absently. "Listen Sammy, I, uh…I also know what happened to your girlfriend. I'm so sorry. I would've done anything to protect you from that."

"_You know where it is?_"

"Kind of, yeah. Mel tried to spot it, but hadn't seen anything, but I think I'm finally closing in on it."

"_Let us help. You let Mel help, so let Dean and me._"

"You can't. You can't be any part of it."

"_Why not? You dragged Mel along on your little crusade, so that makes _her_ apart of it_."

"Mel has no choice in the matter, Sam. Drop it."

Mel's eyebrows disappeared behind her bangs. _What_…did he just say? "What do you mean, I've got no choice, John? What the _hell_ does that mean!"

"Forget it, Melissa. You're not ready to know yet," John hissed, covering the mouthpiece of the phone.

"You can't fudgin' tell me what I am and am not ready for, John Winchester," Mel snapped, glaring at him.

"_Drop it_, Mel," John muttered before returning to the conversation with his younger son. "Listen, Sammy, that's why I'm calling. You and your brother, you gotta stop looking for me. Alright, now, I need you to write down these names."

"_Names? What names? Dad - talk to me, tell me what's going on_," the younger Winchester inquired desperately.

"Look, we don't have time for this," John ordered. "This is bigger than you think, they're everywhere. Even us talking right now, it's - it's not safe."

"No_. Alright? No way._"

"I've given you an order. Now, you stop following me, and you do your job. You understand me? Now take down these names."

"_Dad, it's me_." Dean was somehow on the phone now. Did he really want to talk to John that badly? "_Where are you?_"

"I can't tell you that, son. Not now, it's too dangerous. There's a hunt in Indiana I want you and Sam to take."

"_Yes, sir_."

"There's a list of names of people, I have, that have gone missing over the years Is there a pen handy around you?"

"_Uh, yeah, I got a pen. What are their names?_"

"_And Dean_," John said before the oldest Winchester brother could hang up.

"Yeah?"

"_I'm sending Mel to Indiana to meet you there_," John told him.

"Yes, sir," Dean answered before hanging up. He set his phone down on the nightstand and looked across the room at his younger brother. "Mel's gonna meet us in Indiana," he told Sam, who just nodded sullenly.

* * *

The follower of Azazel watched as the girl drove off in a stolen vehicle. His sister was already in position, which meant it was now _his_ time to spring. Without a second thought, he smoked out of his current meat suit and pursued his target.

* * *

Dean was frustrated.

Dean was more than frustrated, he was downright angry. It was like the night Sam had left for Stanford all over again, only this time the kid was going _to_ Dad, not away from him.

Sam had been the one driving last night, while he looked at the maps and checked out the patters of whatever the SOB was that was killing people; it was always couples who were road-tripping across the country; always couples who went through the small town of Burkittsville, and were never seen again.

As far as Dean knew, all the victims could've just disappeared off the face of this earth.

He thought about calling Sam, just to see if he'd changed his mind, but instantly thought against it once he had his phone open. Shaking his head minutely, he snapped the flip phone closed and slipped it into his pocket, turned off his car, and stepped out into the drizzly weather of Burkittsville, Indiana.

Dean noticed a sign that read 'Scotty's Café', and sauntered over to the front porch where he saw a middle-aged man sitting in a rocking chair. "Let me guess. Scotty."

Scotty looked at the diner's sign, then back at Dean. "Yep."

"Hi, my name's John Bonham," the older Winchester lied easily.

Scotty didn't even bat an eyelash. "Isn't that the drummer from Led Zeppelin?"

Oh. Whoops. Pretending to be taken aback, Dean replied, "Wow. Good. Classic rock fan." He grinned.

"What can I do for you, John?" At Scotty's question, Dean took the two most recent missing posters.

"I was wondering if, uh, you'd seen these people by chance." Dean gave the posters to Scotty.

The older man looked at the pictures for 'bout ten seconds. "Nope. Who are they?"

"Friends of mine," he answered. "They went missing about a year ago. They passed through somewhere around here, and I've already asked around Scottsburg and Salem - "

"Sorry," Scotty interrupted rudely, passing the flyers back to Dean. "We don't get many strangers around here."

Dean nodded, sensing he wasn't gonna get anything out of the guy. "Scotty, you've got a smile that lights up a room, anybody ever tell you that?" The only reaction he was rewarded with was a strange look from the older man. Ok. "Never mind. See you around."

* * *

_Well, then_, Mel thought angrily as the police officer towed away her stolen car. She didn't even know the police were allowed to do that. Now, she was left on the side of the road, stranded in the middle of Illinois. With no cars to be seen for miles. _Yay_; not.

Now all she had was her stuff and the clothes on her back, with no way of getting there quickly until she reached the next town. If she was gonna hitchhike, she might as well wait for a car then walk and waste energy. With a great sigh, she plopped down on the shoulder of the road. After getting her iPod out, and jamming the ear-buds firmly into her ears, zoning out was pretty much the only thing there was to entertain herself with.

Mel jumped when she felt someone tap the back of her head. Turning around, fists reading to lay a few punches, she almost gave none other than Sam Winchester a broken nose.

"Sam!" she shouted, probably a little too loudly considering she hadn't removed the ear-buds, attacking him with a hug. "What are you doing here?" she asked, pulling out the headphones.

"Shouldn't I be asking _you_ that?" Sam said. "What, did you _walk_ all the way from California?"

"What?" Mel questioned, taken aback. "How'd you know we were in California?"

"Oh, um…" She'd mortified the poor boy. Good. "I, uh, sort of figured it out by the caller I.D."

Mel raised an eyebrow. "Oh. Ok, then." Quickly changing the subject, Mel said, "So, we're are you headed?"

"Sacramento, California," Sam told her, looking down at his feet. "I wanted to find Dad."

The female hunter sighed. "Sam…"

"Don't," he said. "I've already had a hashing-out from Dean. Not you, too."

"Well, good. Dean should've been able to knock some sense into you." Mel paused, and looked around. "Where _is_ Dean, anyway?"

"Indiana. He's probably in Burkittsville by now."

Mel sighed. "Well, he did the right thing, and you should be with him, Sam."

"Mel, please…don't," Sam repeated, and walked away.

Rolling her eyes, Mel followed him.

* * *

Everyone around here was friendly enough, sure, but Dean could sense something suspicious around here. Everyone was almost _too_ friendly - except Scotty, who was _just_ the bundle of joy. But taking 'til sundown to fix a break line? And that scarecrow, that probably wasn't a scarecrow? Man, even _he_ had to admit that thing was a little creepy. Also, what was up with that haywire EMF meter?

Either something was going on around here, or Dean has got one broken EMF meter and this town has a couple 'o rusty mechanics.

And that thing Emily had said about the town being 'blessed'…yeah, something was _definitely_ going on around here.

Now Dean was sitting parked outside the orchard, waiting for something to happen - whether it be the couple he had talked to at Scotty's Café comin' over here to for whatever reason, or the damn thing comes after _him_, he was ready to gank it.

Dean was ripped from his musings when he saw none other than Mr. and Mrs. Road-trip walking through the orchard.

"Son of a bitch," he muttered, launching himself out of his car. He quickly grabbed a random shotgun he knew was already loaded with rock salt, but by the time he locked up, the couple had disappeared from sight. "Damn it," he mumbled, slamming the truck closed. And then he was running.

Truth be told, it wasn't hard to find them - just follow the screams. From what he could hear they were screams of fright and not pain, which was good. After running around for about half a minute, he found them - and behind them was none other than the scarecrow himself.

"Get back to your car!" he said. When the couple didn't respond right away, he shouted, "Go! Go!" Finally, they started running again, leaving an opening for Dean to shoot the damn thing. After firing one salt-packed bullet, he could see it wasn't affected in the least. _Shit_, he thought, making a run for it. While he was running, Dean managed to get a couple more shots in, all the while shouting at the couple to keep moving.

After reaching the Impala, Dean stood protectively in front of the man and woman and cocked his gun.

"What…what - what the hell was that?" the man managed to stutter out.

"Don't ask," Dean replied, half- because he didn't actually _know_ what it was, and half- because he didn't really think explaining was gonna help.

Honestly, he wished Sammy was with him.

* * *

"…the scarecrow climbed off it's cross?" Sam's whisper of almost disbelief brought Mel out of her light sleep. She was curled up against a wall, on the opposite side of the room as Meg (whom she decided she disliked because of reasons). "It didn't kill the couple, did it?" she only heard Sam's side of the conversation: "So something must be animating it - a spirit…What makes you say that?…The last meal…given to sacrificial victims…So a god possesses the scarecrow…Do you know which god you're dealing with?…Well, you figure out what it is, you can figure out a way to kill it…You know, if you're hinting you need my help, just ask…Yeah. I'm sorry, too…Are you serious?…I don't even know what to say…I will…Yeah. She's asleep, though…Ok. Bye, Dean."

Mel sleepily noticed that Meg chose that convenient time to wake up. "Who was that?" she asked, moving to sit next to Sam.

"My brother," he answered.

"What'd he say?"

"Goodbye."

_Well, then_, Mel thought as she drifted off to sleep again.

* * *

The next morning, Mel woke up late. Like, _really_ late. Sam and Meg were eating lunch without her, and it was 1:30 p.m. What. The. Hell.

"Sam, what's your problem?" she grumbled standing up. You can probably tell by now that she's a morning person. Her stomach growled, signaling it wanted food, so Mel grudgingly dug a ten out of her pocket. She'd yell at Sam later - _after_ food.

She ordered a chicken sandwich and a diet Pepsi (since there was no coke, dammit), sat down on the floor by her stuff, brooding in her frustration at not waking up early, and ate her food. It wasn't the best, but whatever. Bus station food never tastes good, no matter how much you try to convince yourself.

Sam had his phone glued to his ear for most of the afternoon, and Mel had her nose in a cheap TV show magazine. She was reading an article about Doctor Who (which, by the way, had a lot of false information in it. They even spelled Christopher Eccleston's name wrong: Christapher Ecklestone). By the time the bus was ready to go at 5:05, Sam was starting to look real worried.

"Hey. Our bus came in," Meg announced to them.

"You better catch it," Sam said, and Mel's heat shot up from the magazine. "We gotta go."

"We do?" Mel inquired, dumbfounded.

"Go where?" Meg asked, probably equally dumb-struck.

"Burkittsville," Sam answered. "Mel, are you keeping that?"

Mel looked down at the magazine. "No."

"Then get your stuff."

"Sam…wait," Meg said as Mel turned to gather her stuff.

"I've been tryin' to call my brother for the last three hours. I'm just getting his voicemail."

"Maybe he turned his phone off," Mel suggested as she hefted her bag onto her shoulder.

"You know he wouldn't; you know him," Sam snapped. "I think he might be in trouble."

"What kinda trouble?" Meg asked quietly.

"I can't really explain right now. I'm sorry, look, I don't want you to miss your bus."

"But…I don't understand. You're running back to your brother? The guy you ran away from? Why, because he won't pick up his _phone_? Sam - come with me to California."

Mel rolled her eyes. "C'mon, Sam, let's go if you're in such a hurry."

Sam and Meg exchanged a few more words before the two hunters left the bus stop.

* * *

The ride to Burkittsville was excruciatingly long.

Sam was at the wheel of the stolen car and Mel in the passenger seat with her feet propped up on the dash (_ah, the perks of being short_, she thought). To make herself un-bored, the female hunter had taken to looking out the window, but gave up once it got dark. She didn't notice until later that Sam was white knuckling the steering wheel.

"Hey," she said in the most comforting tone she could manage. "Dean's gonna be fine."

However, that did nothing to make Sam relax. Actually, once a sign that read 'BURKITTSVILLE 3' was visible up ahead, Mel started feeling a little restless. _Dean's okay_, she told herself. _Dean's_ _okay_.

"Where are we going?" Mel asked, curious to know where they were gonna start searching for Sam's brother.

"In the orchard," was all Sam said. "Help me look for a turnoff."

Mel shrugged. "I found it," she said, pointing to a place in the trees that had a cap wide enough for a car. After parking, they both grabbed a shotgun and started searching for any sign of Dean.

"Ever considered we might get lost, Sammy?" she demanded, after seeing the seemingly endless rows of apple trees.

"It's Sam," he replied automatically. "And we won't get lost."

Mel raised a questioning eyebrow but didn't comment. It was a good thing, though, that they eventually _did_ find Dean. He was tied to an apple tree - and Mel was surprised to see a young woman tied to another tree not ten feet away from the older Winchester. Mel quickly went over to untie her, but stopped short when Dean said something along the lines of keeping an eye on the scarecrow.

"What scarecrow?" she and Sam said at the same time. They'd seen no scarecrow.

Dean was untied now, and was hurrying to look at some random post that Sam and I'd passed by.

Wait, that wasn't a post. Was that a…scarecrow cross?

"Oh, ok, shit," Mel said nonchalantly, shrugging.

And then they were running.

"Alright, now, this sacred tree you were talking about - " Sam started.

"It's the source of its power," Dean finished.

"That's means we should find it and torch it," Mel shouted from the back, trying to keep up on her short legs. _Dean should be the slowest, he's the one with the bowlegs_, she grumbled to herself.

"Nah, in the morning," Dean said. "Let's just shag ass before Leather Face catches up."

They'd finally made it to the clearing before the Impala, but were quickly surrounded by what Mel guessed were the town's citizens.

"Please," the girl who'd been tied up said. "Let us go."

"It'll be over quickly, I promise," an old man with graying temples stated.

"Please," she repeated.

"Emily, you have to let him take you," the man insisted. "You have to - " Suddenly, a knife found it's way through his stomach, causing Emily and the aging woman next to the man to scream. The scarecrow had snuck up behind him. As the scarecrow dragged the old man and woman away, the rest of the townspeople booked it.

"Let's just go," Mel said, staring at the retreating figure(s). "C'mon!"

She was the only one who didn't look back.

* * *

The next morning (after returning to the orchard to burn the first tree, or whatever it was called), Sam and Dean said goodbye to Emily as she was getting on a bus headed for Boston. Mel waited in the backseat of the Impala, having already said her goodbyes to the young woman. Emily was nice; Mel hoped she had a good future.

Suddenly, she felt a sudden pressure behind her eyes. "Ow," she muttered, rubbing them as the pain went as fast as it came.

Mel saw a flash of something, but it was so brief she probably imagined it; it'd looked like it was…shushing her?

"Hey, you okay?" Dean's voice brought her out of her thoughts.

She nodded, pushing the image out of her brain. "Yeah. I'm good."


	9. Faith

**A/N:**** Hi! So, this was a fun chapter to write. It's a very angst-filled one, though. I've been home sick from school, which actually is the reason why I'm uploading this sooner than I might have. I really have no comments, really, so I hope you enjoy it!**

* * *

Mel still couldn't believe it had happened. One minute Dean had been fine, the next…after Dean was electrocuted, she had rushed over to make sure his heart was still beating. Thank goodness it was.

Now, she sat in a plastic chair next to his hospital bed with her upper body resting on it. Dean's doctor had informed her and Sam that a heart attack that had been triggered had weakened the older Winchester's heart so much that it would give out in a couple weeks, a month tops. Dean was asleep now, unaware of Mel watching over him.

It was all her fault. If she had just shot the damn thing a split second earlier, her best friend wouldn't be…She was still having a hard time putting _Dean_ and _dying_ in the same sentence. Mel couldn't even imagine what Sam was going through. As far as she knew, the younger Winchester was holed up in the motel room looking for a way to save Dean's life.

Mel felt Dean shift in his sleep for a second before he settled again.

"Miss Bissell?" a kind voice said, making Mel sit up quickly; the nurse had mildly surprised her.

"Yes?" she answered tiredly.

"I hate to say it, but visiting hours are over."

Mel nodded slowly, not having realized until now how dark it was. "Ok…"

"He'll be fine, I promise," she said, smiling sympathetically. "We'll take good care of him."

Mel nodded again. "Mmhmm," she murmured. Reluctantly, the female hunter stood up from her chair. "I'll be back," she said quietly to the still-sleeping Dean, patting him on the hand.

* * *

Back at the motel, Mel didn't say anything. Sam was on the phone, and she vaguely registered he was talking to Pastor Jim. Quietly, she searched through her stuff, looking for her computer. Mel usually left it on the bed, but it was nowhere to be seen.

"What're you looking for?" Oh good, Sam was off the phone.

Since that had been established, she picked up her duffel bag and her shoulder bag and loudly dumped the entire contents of both onto her bed. Not giving Sam an answer, she started searched through the clothes and trinkets.

"If you're looking for your iPod, it's on top of the TV," the younger Winchester suggested. Mel briefly glanced up at him to glare; he wasn't helping.

The charger was plugged into the wall behind her, which meant the computer shouldn't have gone far.

"Is your phone missing? 'Cause we can easily replace that."

_Leave me alone_, she thought sullenly, turning her back on him to go search the bathroom. As she was about to step over the threshold, something that felt like a rolled up piece of paper hit her square on the back, causing her to stop in her tracks. "Sam, _what_ is your problem?" she turned around, fists clenched.

"What's _your_ problem?" he shot back childishly, that bitch-face expression clearly showing. "You were at the hospital all day, today and yesterday. Like yesterday, when you got back here, you did everything in your power to ignore me, amongst other things. Those were the first words you've said to me in two days." He didn't even raise his voice.

Mel scoffed, retreating into the bathroom. "Whatever, Sam."

"Is there something bothering you?" Sam called out. Mel rolled her eyes, turning on the light. "'Cause if you need to talk about it…"

"I'm fine, Sam," she interrupted him, scanning the small room for the familiar rectangular nightmare. Furrowing her brow, she checked the unlikely place of the bathtub before shouting, "WHERE'S MY COMPUTER?!" Mel rounded on Sam, immediately seeing he had his 'uh-oh' face. "Where is it, Sam?"

"Look, before I say anything…"

"Where. Is. My computer."

Sheepishly, Sam moved a bunch of papers (on the anatomy of the heart) that were next to him to reveal Mel's laptop. And it had a big crack running down the top.

"Explain. Now," she snapped, hands on her hips.

"Not until you tell me what is going on with you," he replied, back in bitch-mode.

"Asshole," Mel muttered, grabbing her car keys, wallet, and jacket.

"Where're you going?"

Mel turned the doorknob forcefully. "To get a new computer, ass-hat," she snapped, slamming the door behind her as she left.

* * *

The next day, Mel sat with Dean in the hospital again. He was awake most of the time, and they talked about small unimportant things. For instance, what kind of board games they liked, different model cars, that type of thing. Dean seemed very set on the idea that pool was a board game. Dean fell back to sleep after that conversation, so Mel opted to go get a caffeine loaded drink for herself.

It was around lunch time that Dean woke up again. Mel was eating a stale chocolate muffin that didn't _quite_ have the amount of sugar in it she was hoping for.

"Why are you here?" his weak voice made her look up from her half-eaten 'lunch.'

"What d'you mean?"

"You came to seem me today, yesterday, and the day before," Dean pointed out. "Why?"

Why? Because she felt as guilty as hell. Because she should've taken that shot. Because _she_ should be the one in that bed, dying, with only a month left to live.

"You're my best friend," Mel answered instead, shrugging.

Dean rolled his eyes. "There's gotta be more to it than that."

"I just…I dunno, I don't like the idea of you dying alone?" she shrugged again. "I'm here. Deal with it."

He narrowed his is minutely, albeit suspiciously, but didn't say anything more.

Visiting hours ended too quickly. Before she knew it, Mel was driving back to the motel where Sam was on his third day of fruitlessly searching for a way to save his brother's life.

"How's Dean doing?" Sam asked her as soon as she entered the room.

"Same as ever," Mel answered and threw her keys on the nightstand. "Cranky, and wondering why the hell you're still even bothering." He'd also asked why they were still in town, though Mel suspected he was secretly grateful.

"That bad, huh?" Sam snorted.

"It's not as bad as it sounds," Mel replied, searching through her duffel bag for clean underwear and her makeup bag. She retreated into the bathroom after giving a "yeah" of affirmation to Sam's "save me some hot water."

After turning the water on, she looked at herself in the grimy mirror. There were dark shadows under her exhausted eyes. Her was tangled in places and very obviously unwashed. Mel hadn't slept well in three nights, and it was showing.

She stripped down to nothing and stepped into the shower. This was actually the first shower she'd had in days, and it felt good to have the water run through her hair (even though said water was filled with rust). After standing there for a good five minutes, she finished her shower.

Once the water was shut off, Mel heard Sam talking to someone through the door. It sounded like he was leaving a message for someone. Quickly, wanting to just _sleep_, Mel dried her body off, and blew-dry and combed her hair.

She didn't even notice, at first, that Dean was sitting on a chair across the room. Mel blinked, looking from Dean, to Sam, to the mountain of research on Sam's bed, to Dean again.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she demanded, taking on a slightly angered tone.

"Y'know, Sammy said those exact words," Dean said. "Much more nicely, though."

"Did you check yourself out?" Mel questioned.

Dean nodded. "You look worse than you did the last time I saw you."

"That was only four hours ago and I just took a shower," she stated dryly, putting her stuff away.

"Yeah, I'll bet," Dean muttered, shifting uncomfortably in the chair. "Did Sam tell you about his genius plan?"

"No, but he _did_ break my laptop," Mel replied, sitting down on her bed. "Why, what's his plan?"

"There's a specialist in Nebraska that people are saying is the real deal," Sam said. "It's the only way I could find."

Mel collapsed back onto her bed. "Fine. Whatever."

* * *

Mud. That was the only thing she was really worried about. There was mud _everywhere._

"It looks like horse shit!" she complained, looked at the ground through the open car door. "I'm getting out the other side," she decided to herself heatedly, slamming the door closed. Once outside the car, Mel hurried to catch up with the boys, who had somehow made it almost halfway to the tent where a sing that read "Roy Le Grange: Faith Healer" stood. Dean wasn't going to be happy about that. "Ew, mud, ew, ew, ew, mud," she muttered the whole way, watching where her feet stepped.

"I mean, come on, Sam, a faith healer?" Yep, Mel was right: Dean was _not_ amused.

"Maybe it's time to have a little faith, Dean," Sam suggested.

"You know what I've got faith in? Reality. Knowing what's really going on," Dean stated.

"Seriously?" Mel asked. "After _everything_ we've seen you're a skeptic."

"Yes, because we've seen it. We know it's real."

"But if you know evil's out there, how can you not believe good is out there, too?" Sam questioned.

"Because I've seen what evil does to good people."

"Maybe God works in mysterious ways," a young blonde woman, who had magically appeared next to Mel, said.

Mel jumped a mile in the air. "Don't _do_ that." Great, hopefully this girl wasn't offended by her reproachful tone.

"Maybe he does," Dean replied to the woman, smiling. "I think you just turned me around on the subject."

"Yeah, I'm sure," she said.

Dean held out his hand, "I'm Dean, this is Sam and Mel."

The woman took Dean's hand. "Layla. So, if you're not a believe, then why are you here?"

"Well, apparently my brother here believes enough for the three of us."

An older, middle aged woman came up next to Layla and put an arm around her. "Com on, Layla. It's about to start." The two women smiled at the trio before retreating into the tent.

Dean's watched Layla as she walked away. "Well, I bet you she can work in some mysterious ways."

"Dean!" Mel snapped. "I don't care you've got heart issues, I _will_ hit you on the head."

The inside of the tent was extremely crowded. People were looking for any available seat, and it didn't seem like they were going to find more than two seats together.

"You and Dean go find a spot," Mel told Sam. "I'll just stand in the back or something."

She noticed Sam drag Dean up to the second row, where they sat down. Mel just sort of stood in the back, leaving empty seats for those who might need them.

When the service started, someone played the piano while a blind guy Mel assumed was Roy Le Grange spoke. "Each morning my wife, Sue Ann, reads me the news. Never seems good, does it?" A collective "no" from the many people sounded out. "Seems like there's always someone committing some immoral, unspeakable act. But, I say to you, God is watching. ("Yes he is"). God rewards the good, and He punishes the corrupt. It is the Lord who does the healing here, friends. The Lord who guides me in choosing who to heal by helping me see into people's hearts."…"You think so, young man?"

Mel rolled her eyes, wondering what it was Dean had said.

"Sorry," Dean said loudly.

"No, no. Don't be. Just watch what you say around a blind man, we've got real sharp ears." The crowd laughed. "What's your name, son?"

"Dean."

"Dean…" the older man was nodding to himself. "I want - I want you to come up here with me." That caused everyone in the room to clap. Mel didn't even lift a finger.

"No, it's ok," Dean protested.

"You've come here to be healed, haven't cha?"

"Well, yeah, but ahh…maybe you should just pick someone else." It was very like Dean to do something like this. The crowd was clapping loudly, now; loudly and encouragingly.

"Oh, no. I didn't pick you, Dean, the Lord did."

_My, how persistent_, Mel thought as she watched the whole room get more excited.

Finally, Dean reluctantly rose and moved onto the stage. He and Roy exchanged a couple words before Roy invited everyone to pray with him. Generally, Mel would have done the respectful thing and prayed with them, but she wanted to see what would happen. Roy lifted his arms into the air (some of the crowd mimicked him). A few seconds passed before the older man moved his right hand to Dean's left shoulder, then the left side of his head.

Mel almost screamed when she saw it. It appeared out of no where; tall, dressed in an old worn suit, wrinkles _everywhere_. The thing looked like an old man that looked like he had skipped the grave and kept going. Whatever it was, it joined Roy on the whole 'let's touch Dean's head' pep fest, and Mel looked around to see if anyone else noticed. Apparently she was the only one.

Genuinely freaked out, she did the only thing she could think of: get away.

* * *

Mel was sitting in the Impala playing a game of Free Cell on her new computer when the boys found her. She wasn't really paying attention to the game, and that was for a couple reasons: 1) she kept loosing, and 2) that old dude she'd seen had freaked the crap out of her.

Mel jumped when the boys got in the car.

"Man, you're jumpy today," Dean, who now looked a lot more healthy, remarked. "What gives?"

"I saw a thing," she stated, closing out of her failed game.

"A thing?"

"A thing." Mel repeated, though she got the feeling Dean had wanted her to elaborate. "It looked like an old man, but…with _wrinkles_."

Sam huffed out a laugh. "All old men have wrinkles."

"Oh, no! My life is a lie," Mel replied sarcastically. "No, seriously, it touched your head, Dean. It appeared out of no where and did…something."

Nobody said anything. Dean was especially quiet.

"Just forget about it for now," Sam interjected. "The doctor should probably check out your heart, Dean, just in case."

"Drop me off at a restaurant first," Mel told him. "Like, McDonalds."

"McDonalds?" Sam inquired, disgust on his face. "Why?"

"'Cause free Wifi," she answered simply.

* * *

Surprisingly, there was a McDonalds in town. Mel ordered a chicken sandwich and a diet coke and sat in a far corner where she could see every single location in the restaurant. Getting situated sounded like a good idea if she was going to be there for a while. Who knew how long the boys were going to be at the clinic for?

After setting up the internet, she played internet chess against this person who obviously had no idea what they were doing ("You suck, dude"). She got bored with that quickly, so she decided to play Solitaire in solitude.

Luckily, Sam was able to pick her up after a while, because she might have come up with more puns.

"Where's Dean?" Mel asked as sat on the shotgun seat.

"Back at Roy's," he answered quietly. "How was the Wifi?"

"A little faster than usual." Mel looked at Sam, and by the look on his face she could tell something was on his mind. "What is it?"

"At the clinic, the doctor told us that a guy Dean's age had had a heart attack."

"So?"

"So, Dean wanted me to check it out. Marshall Hall died at 4:17."

"The same time Dean was healed." Mel shook her head. "Dean's not gonna like that."

* * *

"The exact time I was healed," Dean said, stunned.

"Yeah. So, I put together a list of everyone Roy's healed," Sam told him. "Six people over the past year, and I cross-checked them with the local obits. Every time someone was healed, someone else died. And each time, the victim died of the same symptom Le Grange was healing at the time."

"Someone's healed of cancer, someone else dies of cancer?" Dean inquired.

"Somehow. Le Grange…he's trading a life for another." Sam sighed.

"Wait, wait, wait. So, Marshall Hall _died_ to save me?"

Mel looked at both the brothers. They both looked visibly upset, but for different reasons. Dean looked like he was ready to pack a few punches, whilst Sam looked incredibly guilty.

"Dean, the guy probably would've died anyway. And someone else would've been healed," Sam replied.

"You never should've brought me here," Dean spat.

"We didn't know." Mel shrugged.

"The thing I don't understand is how is Roy doing it?" Sam wondered aloud. "How's he trading a life for a life?"

"Oh, he's not doing it," Dean said. "Something else is doing it for him?"

"What do you mean?"

Mel snapped her fingers, suddenly remember the old man she'd seen. "Tall, Dark, and Wrinkly."

"The old man, yeah," Dean agreed. "I didn't wanna believe it, but deep down I knew."

Now Mel was confused. "What? Wait…did you see him, too?"

The older Winchester nodded. "There's only one thing that can give and take a life like that…We're dealing with a reaper."

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Mel broke the silence. "So, what, I can see reapers all of the sudden?"

"There's more than one?" Sam asked. "More than one Grim Reaper?"

"No, no, no, not _the_ Grim Reaper, just reapers in general," Mel corrected. "They go around collecting the souls of the dead and take them on to the next life. There's thousands, possibly millions of them."

"How do you know this?" Dean asked.

Mel shrugged. "I have a lot more time off than you'd think." She sat down at the table next to Sam. "What I don't understand is how I could see it."

"What do you mean?"

"Only the dead or dying can see them - or, when they're after you for some reason. Obviously, I'm a perfectly healthy - _alive_ - human being."

"Now, the question is how is Roy controlling the damn thing?"

"That cross," Sam mumbled absently.

"What?"

"There was this cross, I noticed it in the church and I knew I had seen it before." Sam grabbed something out of a pile of papers. "Here." He handed it to Dean.

Dean took it. "A tarot?"

"That makes sense," Mel said. "Tarot cards date back to the early Christian era when some priests were still using magic. A few, however…veered into the dark stuff. Necromancy, how to push death away and how to cause it."

"So Roy's using black magic to bind the reaper," the older Winchester deadpanned.

"If he is, he's riding the whirlwind," Sam told him, taking back the card. "It's like putting a dog leash on a great white."

After some more discussion, the trio decided to head back to Roy's to find out what kind of black spell he might be using on the reaper - and, obviously, how to break said spell.

At Roy Le Grange's house, another service was about to start.

"If Roy's using a spell, there might be a spell book," Sam guessed. "Mel, keep an eye out for the reaper."

Mel, who had been about to step out of the car onto the horse shit (known as mud), stopped in her tracks. "Why?"

"Because you're the only one who can see it," the younger Winchester replied.

"That's…not the answer I was looking for," she muttered, getting back in the car with a huff.

Not five minutes later did she notice Sam exit the house. Mel got out of the car.

"Hey, I haven't seen it yet," she informed him.

"Yeah, well, I know who it's going after next," he told her.

"Who?"

"That protester."

Mel blinked. "I've seen him walking around the parking lot."

"We gotta find him."

Mel nodded.

"HELP!"

Mel and Sam shared a look before they took off running in the direction of the shout.

"Help! Help me please!"

Mel searched around wildly, and finally spotted the balding head of the reaper a few cars over. "Over there, Sam!" she pointed. Finally, they reached the protester, and Mel got a good look at the reaper, which was making its way toward them through the rows of cars. "Whoa, it looks even worse in the daylight."

"Where is it?" Sam demanded, panicked.

"It's, like, five feet in front of me!" Mel shouted. The reaper stopped walking when it was three feet away from her. "And now it's…just…standing there?" she gulped. What the hell was going on with this thing? "Why is it just standing there?"

"I don't know," Sam answered.

The reaper stared at Mel through narrowed eyes, almost as if it were asking for permission to pass. And then just like that, it vanished. With a surprised tone, Mel said, "It's gone."

"It's gone?" Sam asked, sounding equally surprised.

"Yeah, it is," the protester confirmed.

Sam's phone rang, and the younger Winchester answered it immediately. "Dean?" To the protester, he said, "Hey, I think it's okay."

The protester nodded, walking a little distance away from Sam and Mel. The female hunter let out a startled yelp when the reaper suddenly appeared again and began taking the life of the protester.

"Sam!" she shrieked, not knowing what to do.

"Dean, it didn't work!" Sam shouted. "The reaper's still coming! I'm telling you, I'm telling you it didn't work. Roy must not be the one controlling this thing!"

Mel stared in horror, hand covering her mouth, as the reaper continued to kill the protester.

"Dean? Dean!" Sam sighed in frustration, hanging up his phone. "Sue Ann's controlling it."

She nodded. The few seconds before the reaper backed off felt like hours. Dean must have stopped Sue Ann.

* * *

After a brief discussion on what to do about Sue Ann, and the binding spell she'd placed on the reaper, it was decided that they would both destroy the alter and a Coptic cross Dean and seen Sue Ann use to control it. Mel was, once again, on reaper look-out while the boys went off to find the alter.

Only about ten minutes passed when Mel saw Sue Ann suspiciously hurrying across the lawn.

"What's she doing?" Mel muttered. Keeping her eyes on the older woman, she reached for the door handle. Quickly, she scrambled out of the car and right into the mud. "Really?" she inquired the air exasperatedly, looking down at her now muddy converse. Rolling her eyes, she hurried off after Sue Ann. The older woman had stopped outside the tent, and was reciting some spell with the Coptic cross in her hands.

Without a single thought, Mel ran up behind her, snatched the cross from her hands, and threw it to the ground where it shattered.

"No! Melissa, what have you done?" Sue Ann shouted, kneeling down next to the broken pieces.

"You can't play God, Mrs. Le Grange," Mel told her firmly, vaguely wondering how the woman knew her name. "I'd say I'm sorry, but…I'm not," the younger woman said as the reaper appeared, grinning, several yards away.

Sue Ann tried to get away, but the reaper appeared in front of her. It reached out and touched the side of her head, killing her like it killed her victims. After many seconds, the reaper let Sue Ann drop to the ground before it vanished. Sue Ann convulsed a few times before going still; dead.

A large hand on Mel's shoulder made her jump, but she relaxed when she realized it was Sam.

"C'mon," Sam said, "let's go back to the car."

Dean was already next to the Impala, presumably waiting for them.

"Hell of a week," the older Winchester remarked.

"Yeah…All right, come on," Sam repeated. "We should get going."

With that said, the trio got into the car.

* * *

The next morning, Mel finished packing before the boys did. She now sat on the grimy toilet seat, thinking about the past few days. It still felt like the whole thing was her fault. Even though Dean had been healed, Mel still felt guilt gnawing at her stomach and it wouldn't go away.

Now, it was going to be her fault that Layla was to die. Of course, if she'd taken that shot when she'd had the chance, they wouldn't even be in Nebraska and they wouldn't even have heard of Roy Le Grange. Sue Ann's death was also her fault. Mel had been the one to knock it out of the poor woman's hands, causing the reaper to kill her.

"Hey, Mel, ya comin'?" Dean rapped on the door. "Or are you gonna stay here?"

"I'm coming," she replied.

Mel rose from the toilet seat. Hopefully, just hopefully, she wouldn't be the fault of someone else's death.

* * *

**Review? :)**


	10. author's note, sorry!

**Hey guys!**

**I'm sooooo sorry I haven't updated Falling in a while! I lost the notebook where I kept the outline of it (like, what happens in what episode and which episode I'm gonna use) and I cAN'T FIND IT! :(**

**I'm looking for it, though, so never fear!**


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